NCsoft, Foundation 9 bypass E3 '08

By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted May 2, 2008 12:33 pm PT

[UPDATE 2] Following Activision/Vivendi's departure from the ESA, more studios say they will not be attending this year's E3 Media & Business Summit; id status unclear.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has been in a serious state of flux in recent years. At the behest of many top publishers and hardware makers, the E3 Media & Business Summit organizer Entertainment Software Association said in July 2006 that it would be dramatically downsizing the annual trade show--reducing attendees from approximately 60,000 to a mere 5,000--and changing the venue from the spacious Los Angeles Convention Center to segmented locations in Santa Monica, California.

In December, the ESA said that the E3 Media & Business Summit would be returning to the LACC, but that this year's show would remain a scaled-down affair in line with the 2007 expo, which was invite-only. Though the ESA no longer plans to occupy the LACC in its entirety, the convention center will have at least one noticeable void on its show floor. Earlier today, Activision (and by proxy Vivendi) said it would not be attending this year's media event, and in fact would not be renewing its membership with the trade body at all.

With Activision and Vivendi pulling out of this year's show, it now appears as if at least some other studios are following the soon-to-be merged giants' lead. GameSpot has learned that NCsoft and Foundation 9--both of which participated in last year's show--will not be attending this year's event.

"No, we're not attending E3 this year," said a Foundation 9 representative. "We just didn't feel like we got enough out of the investment last year in order to justify the expense this year." Foundation 9 has 11 internal development studios, including Backbone Entertainment, Double Helix (nee Shiny and The Collective), Amaze Entertainment, Sumo Digital, and Digital Eclipse. Upcoming games from Foundation 9's various studios include Silent Hill: Homecoming, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and Monster Lab.

[UPDATE] Following GameSpot's original report, a Foundation 9 representative clarified the developer's absence at the show. "Our decision not to exhibit at E3 this year, was in no way in response to Activision’s decision," said the rep. "We came to the decision on our own at the end of 2007. Some of our business development folks may actually go to the show as attendees, we're just not investing in the exhibit space. In addition, we just want to be clear that we have nothing against the show or the ESA in any way; exhibiting at E3 is just not something that fits with our marketing strategy this year."

A less surprising absence is NCsoft, which engaged in a heated confrontation with the ESA closing out E3 2006. After being fined $5,000 for a noise violation, NCsoft vice president of strategic development Fred Schmidt publicly called out the trade body, saying, "We're not sure we're on the same plane with this organization... We have been harassed for three days straight, and I'm not sure we're coming back here." Contrary to Schmidt's posturing, NCsoft did make an appearance at the ESA's 2007 trade show.

As for NCsoft skipping E3 2008, a representative of the publisher told GameSpot, "The timing wasn't right for our products, so it really doesn't make sense for us to go." NCsoft has a handful of games in its stable, including the high-profile Guild Wars 2, which is expected to go into beta during the second half of this year, and Aion: Tower of Eternity, expected to launch in Korea in 2008.

[UPDATE] Finally, this afternoon an executive at the PR agency which has represented id Software in the past informed GameSpot that the developer will indeed be attending this year's show, despite the absence of its longtime publisher, Activision. However, reps had not commented on online reports claiming the Doom and Rage developer would be skipping the event.

[UPDATE 2] However, soon after this story's publication, the same agency retracted its previous statement, promising more details to follow.

78 Comments

  • vortex_gw

    Posted Jul 2, 2008 3:25 pm PT

    In Guild Wars 2 they should add tons of new stuff, otherwise the game will be bad. GW is boring now. I hope they have learned their lesson from the other MMOs.

  • kalli_bumbo

    Posted Jun 26, 2008 5:55 am PT

    Rust In Peace E3

  • doughboy93

    Posted Jun 16, 2008 12:25 pm PT

    Man that's uber weak sauce. Rest in peace E3.

  • kalli_bumbo

    Posted May 11, 2008 2:33 pm PT

    GUILD WARS FTW(i didnt read the "news" lol)

  • SethandJeremy

    Posted May 10, 2008 3:14 pm PT

    E3 is going down hard.

  • rpgisforme

    Posted May 10, 2008 5:08 am PT

    A slow and extremely painful death to what was once an awesome thing to behold. RIP E3

  • decoy1978

    Posted May 7, 2008 10:30 am PT

    It all boils down to $$$. Unless your one of the major companies and game developers, attending E3 is really costly and the return you get from it is quite minimal when you have to compete with loud noise and shelf space. Ironically, TGS doesn't have that problem.... in fact if the old E3 openned its doors to the public I'm sure these companies wouldn't be complaining. Overall, E3 has to change and going back to its roots will not bring back more people. You can't go home again once you left....

  • Cabal23

    Posted May 7, 2008 3:40 am PT

    It all went bad when Paris Hilton thought she needed to show up. E3 is no place for Hollywood hijinx. Leave it to the devs, buyers, and writers. I's not a drinking party. It's a trade show.

  • McGregor

    Posted May 6, 2008 9:48 am PT

    I wonder if these larger developers are opting to host their own event and save the cost of doing multiple events, or simply have all the attention focused on their product alone, and not have to compete with other vendor's/dev's

  • nate1222

    Posted May 6, 2008 3:56 am PT

    I actually agree with the downsizing of E3. LET ME EXPLAIN! Back when E3 was a "Vegas lights show", smaller devs with cool ideas couldn't get much attention. The "big names" could practically buy attention via spectacle. So a dev with cool ideas wouldn't get to explain plot, story, visual style, play machanics, AI, etc... Thus, many slickly-produced and highly-predictable games hogged the spotlight. To thwart this, downsizing was neccessary. Now a dev gets time and attention to explain their product to journalists and reviewers. Smaller devs actually stand a snowballs chance for once. The mega-publishers hate it (and refuse to show up) because they can't buy the crowd out anymore. Well "wa-wa-wa". But, NOT LETTING THE PUBLIC IN IS MY MAJOR GRIPE!!!! We, the public, BUY these damn games! We should be allowed to see what's coming up.

  • victorgonzalez

    Posted May 5, 2008 9:54 pm PT

    I'm not completely sure, but I have a suspicion that everyday gamers have no idea how monumentally expensive it is to make an impactful showing at E3. We're talking about swimming pools of Abe Lincoln's here people, Olympic size swimming pools. Development cycles are no longer 1 or 2 year affairs for small development houses and E3's scheduling might not be optimized for their strategies. Even the big guys like Activision might see better returns on their investments by flexing their muscles on more focused and localized advertising campaigns. Ultimately WHO will benefit from some more developers having more money, time and flexibility in creating the games that they think we want? Mmm, I wonder...

  • winnazdaluza

    Posted May 5, 2008 6:03 pm PT

    WHO benefitted from killing E3 i would like to know???? it must have been the dumbest desicion EVERRRRR to downsize , now their loosing cash and people have lost interest.
    seriously somebody had to have had some intrest in seeing E3 fail but who??

  • Psycotico

    Posted May 5, 2008 2:20 pm PT

    It certainly will change the feel of the expo if we continue to see good entertainment creators like NC Soft and certainly Activision pull out of E3 but I don't think this will deter the ESA from their goal to make E3 itself into a better opportunity for all industry participants and not just Micro, Sony, and Nintendo. I certainly hope that this isn't a foreboding sign that the gaming industry is facing hard times with the down economy but seeing as how they're just about the only industry besides the movies these days that isn't slowly dying, I can't really see the justification that other studios would pull out of E3 also. So all hopes towards a future of greatness remain positive from my position. I hope from all yours as well.

  • Sony_Loyalist

    Posted May 5, 2008 12:34 pm PT

    If it works, don't change it!

  • Lifeshifter

    Posted May 5, 2008 10:09 am PT

    No one cares about E3 since they changed it all around and its not an event anymore, plus this time of the year is the hardest for developers to produce working models of their games because their still in the early stages of development for they're christmas season releases.

    Im almost expecting most companies to bail out of this event in the next few years as it was slowly dissapear until its either scheduled around a better time later in the year or turned back into the E3 people used to love going to.

  • StSk8ter29

    Posted May 5, 2008 9:13 am PT

    Well, history is cyclical. If you remember the old consumer electronics show game companies fell out of that trade show to create E3. I have a feeling that although the basis for leaving E3 isn't the same as why they left CES we still may see a new convention in the works.

  • DarkStreetDev

    Posted May 5, 2008 7:46 am PT

    I don't care much for E3 anymore after last year.

  • P90stein

    Posted May 5, 2008 6:32 am PT

    honestly.who cares whos attending and whos not.
    Im pretty sure no one here is attending.

  • jknight5422

    Posted May 5, 2008 6:09 am PT

    It's a tragedy.

  • amogley

    Posted May 5, 2008 4:13 am PT

    By downsizing E3 they have shot themselves in the foot. I have a feeling that a lot of game companies will start migrating to the TGS or other similar expos.

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