By Andy Goldberg Jul 12, 2007, 4:09 GMT
Los Angeles - Visitors to the E3 video game exhibition in years past were used to mingling with tens of thousands of enthusiasts.
Their eardrums were bombarded with the boom of furious weaponry amid a general assault on the senses in the massive Staples Centre in Los Angeles.
This year the scene could hardly be more different. The three-day E3, which began Tuesday, is taking place in the relatively bucolic air of Santa Monica and attendance is limited to a select group of 3,000 industry insiders.
According to E3 spokesman Dan Hewitt, the change is an attempt to banish the fanboy atmosphere of past years and inject a more businesslike tone into the proceedings.
'We have focused on culling the list to ensure that the people who attend this year's summit are the key decision-makers from a cross section of communities, including retailers, developers, publishers and the media,' he said.
But the change also reflects the fact that many players in the industry have lost their focus and find themselves in an unexpected crisis, says video game blogger Tim Hardaway.
'Microsoft is having problems with the xBox 360, and Sony's Playstation 3 has not sold like hot cakes,' he says. 'The only ones with something to really show off are the Nintendo people. The Wii has taken the industry by storm.'
It wasn't meant to be that way. Microsoft and Sony both thought that their consoles, packed with the power of a supercomputer and amazing graphics ability, would continue their domination of the market.
But instead it's the Wii, with its innovative motion controller, that has redefined the gaming space by reaching out to regular folks who just want some harmless fun in their spare time, rather than spending night after caffeine-filled night playing hyper-challenging and often ultra-violent games.
The Xbox 360, introduced in late 2005, has sold about 5.6 million units in the United States. The Wii, released a year later, has already sold 2.8 million units and the PS3 has sold just 1.4 million units.
John Riccitiello, the chief executive of Electronic Arts, explained in a myth-busting interview on the eve of E3 just what went wrong.
The influential boss of the largest computer and video game producers declared many of today's offerings were 'boring' and called on companies to appeal more to casual game players.
'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,' Mr Riccitiello said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 'For the most part, the industry has been rinse- and-repeat. There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before.'
The games business was 'at risk of being a little less interesting than Facebook and iPods and the next cool cellphone,' Riccitello said.
Add to that the recent woes of Microsoft's Xbox 360, which could face a billion-dollar recall due to overheating problems, and the low sales of Sony's PS3 and it's easy to understand why few feel like partying.
Things could change very quickly however. On the eve of E3, Sony announced a 100-dollar price cut in the PS3. Sales jumped immediately with the previously unpopular console topping the Amazon bestseller list.
Sony hopes the revival will continue. But like the rest of the video game industry it will take patience, thought and strategy - attributes not easily accessed amid the boom and blur of the old E3. That's why this year's confab is so much quieter.
'The entire purpose of the summit is to make sure the business of games is done,' said E3 spokesman Hewitt. 'We needed to create an environment to ensure that happened.'
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