There's already a lot going around about E For All, mainly from people who never even went to the show, given that it's easy to say that things should be taken with a grain of salt. Today we'll look at E For All, the titles at the show and what could have helped them out more given the scenario they had to face. First up lets go over the basics.

E For All was a step by IDG to produce a public trade show where gamers, media and others could all come into one place and experience a show full of new and unreleased titles, giving people a heads up on something they generally only read about. Unfortunately this is also what a lot of other shows across the US are trying to do, so given that things kinda need to be timed right to land that slow spot in the year for gamers and a spot where companies still have the cash to swing around.

The show this year suffered from a lot of companies dropping out of the show, so much so that the main companies around were 2K Games, HP, Intel, Nintendo, EA, Activision (Through representation by Target), THQ and of course Konami, this isn't to dismiss the smaller groups but the number of mainstream players on the floor was not an entirely good sign. Smaller floor displays, limited game demos and odd spotlight areas made things a bit vague as to how gamers were supposed to recieve some of the events.

The show seemed to carry a feel of rush to it, like when the floor fell out on many companies planning to show, they needed a pickup to get the attention back, enter the MLG pitstop, the giant XFX bus with Fatality and of course what might be seen as a very oddly themed main stage for the show. Something about bagpipes and gaming... they dont seem to blend well. This is where I would probably chime in with citations to other popular shows that bring in the people and they bring in a lot of attention as well. While MLG is fine to have around and Halo 3 is a great show puller, having seminars all show long about how to be "l33t" at Halo isn't going to get everyone in there. Stepping out of the bandwagon mode would have benefitted the show, there are some things they should have considered before that move.

Gamers at many conventions like this are attracted to one major thing, interaction, not so much on a personal one to one level, but on a "you just got your face smashed in and your mother is crying at how horrible you just got worked, put the controller down and go home" level. For me, and my experience with smaller shows and larger shows, one way that they could have accomplished this is by enabling a LAN feature to the show, people love showing off rigs, people love being able to pick what game they're going to stomp others in and if they're on consoles it's easy enough to supply them with gaming as well. Competition without giant pre-req lists makes for a good environment. The MLG area was a good idea but people got tired of it or were just not interested at all. When it came to the Intel booth, people watched the "extreme masters" for a bit, but honestly, if they want to see CS 1.6 they can do it at home. HP and Nintendo were on top of this in various ways, HP promoted the blackbird, but they didn't just have it on a pedestal going "this is a $5500 pc" they actually ran the systems around the place enabling people to play things like Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 in multiplayer matches on higher end configurations. Nintendo kicked down the door for this idea when they had their stadium seating and lines for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, having a spotlight, tons of people watching and free t-shirts for those who played, they made a spotlight out of a game that made people rage with determination to win.

The failure is the lack of that competition around the show floor, even moreso when inside it was hard enough to find a wireless connection on the fly, so much for the idea of even throwing down a home-made LAN environment. People do enjoy seeing titles and waiting in lines to see them, but the show was missing what it took to give people a reason to hang around for the additional 3 days.

With that said, lets focus on the games.