SC-E for All?

Now, onto the last article regarding Sony's lost opportunity at E for All. John Callaham politely disagrees with my reasoning for why SCEA should have been at the show, although I had to truncate some of his side thoughts for space:

...There are already a number of events that consumers in the US can check out upcoming games that Microsoft and Sony did attend. Penny Arcade Expo had over twice as many people attend as E For All did this year and Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and many other publishers were there. Comic-Con, while not a video game-only event, had over 100,000 people attend this year. Nintendo was a no-show at Comic-Con.

In my opinion it was Nintendo who most likely lost out by exhibiting at a low attendance start-up event, which E For All turned out to be. The quoted 18,000 number of attendees is actually lower than what organizers originally said they hoped would attend.

So in summary; just because Sony and Microsoft didn't exhibit E For All doesn't mean they don't care about gamers and consumers...they just didn't care for E For All and put their consumer outreach to bigger and more established venues as well as staging their own events.
Ratchet & Clank Future could've only been helped by being at E for All.

Thanks for writing in, John, and I appreciate your insight. I don't think that Sony is uncaring for not coming to LA, per se, but I'm sure that a hands-on with newer builds of Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted, or some of the upcoming PlayStation Store titles would have been beneficial to the company, since it's so close to release time compared to the pre-beta builds on display in July and August.

At this point, however, I wouldn't argue that Nintendo lost out, or Konami for that matter. Even with a low attendance, Nintendo's booth attracted the lion's share of attendees, as did Konami's. Anyone who had high-profile titles got most of that foot traffic, and the ears of those peoples' friends. In regard to getting word of mouth out there, I think that the big companies, even if they lost out now, could see better results on their games after displaying them at the show.

Zachary Heitling's take on the show was totally different:
I completely agree that Sony f'd up *big time* by not making it out to E For All. The only presence I felt there for the station was at play on trade's booth when I played in the warm ups for the Soul Calibur 3 tournament. Other than that, nothing. Lots of peripheral vendors and such, but no Sony. Then again I was pretty sure they wouldn't make a showing because my friend who works at SCEA made no mention of it.

Microsoft was indeed there as you said, but also with Guitar Hero III and Rock Band! All those stations in the middle, as well as the GH 2 tournaments put on by Target and MLG ran on 360 hardware also. Also, yes, Halo 3 and Gears of War were there in full force.

I brought 2 new people with me and a friend who had attended E3 with me since '03, and boy was it different. However, we actually got to sit down, play in/watch some tournaments, and I got to try out all the Nintendo stuff. Add the autograph signings, and the good amount of swag?! It amounts to nothing but goodness. Well worth the four day pass price, loved every minute of it.
Glad to hear you had fun. Even if attendance was low, I think that more buzz for SCEA titles with hardcore gamers would only help and never hurt. I'm not sure it can survive if it's head to head against Penny Arcade Expo next year, though. The Penny Arcade guys have a lot of momentum and public goodwill that'll be tough to beat.