'E For All' debuts in Los Angeles

The 'E For All' expo kicked off last Thursday at the LA Convention Center in the heart of downtown Los Angeles to a crowd of nearly 18,000 people. After the disappointing changes that the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) made this year, the promoters of 'E For All' were hoping to bring gamers from around the world to a convention that was open to everybody.

This year's E3, which was held last May, was toned down from previous years going from nearly 60,000 attendees to a group of about 5,000 developers that had to go through an application process that was not worthy of the event itself. 'E For All' fixed what was wrong with E3 and used the model of the 'Tokyo Game Show’, which is open to the public and not just industry folk.

The show consisted of publishers, software and hardware companies, and smaller outlets that were trying to get the word out on their new product.

The highlight of the show was Nintendo who were there to show off their holiday lineup of games such as 'Super Mario Galaxy' and 'Super Smash Bros. Brawl' for the Nintendo Wii console. Game publisher, Konami, also appeared to be a favorite at the expo as attendees waited nearly 3 hours to play a short demo of 'Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots', which is due out in 2008 for the PlayStation 3; and THQ who previewed the upcoming ‘WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw 2008’.

One of my personal favorites at the show was the upcoming game ‘Rock Band’. ‘Rock Band’ takes the fun of ‘Guitar Hero’, adds a bass player, vocalist, and drummer to the mix, and you can have your very own karaoke-style band in your living room while performing songs from some of the greatest rock bands of our time.

Some of the smaller companies that seemed to peak interest were ‘TN Games’ (www.tngames.com) who have developed a vest that mimics damage your character takes in the game.

For instance, if you are playing a first person shooter, and get shot by an enemy, the vest will vibrate where your character got hit to portray a more life-like feel of game play. The vest will ship sometime this November with ‘Call of Duty 2’ for the PC.

Another booth that seemed to be creating some buzz was ‘Power Up Games’ (www.powerupgames.com) which has actually created a community for gamers to help them train for a future in the industry.

The main problem with the show was the fact that it was too small. This 4-day event was easily conquered in about 3 hours and the lack of Microsoft and Sony was extremely evident since they are 2 of the 3 major hardware companies in the industry.

It is understandable since this is only the first of what seems to be an annual event and hopefully the turn out this year will urge larger companies to attend next year.