EB Games held its first public Expo on the weekend, and we were there for a show packed with games, costumes, and cool tech.
We spent the weekend on the Gold Coast, and, yes, it's a wretched hive of (tanned) scum and villainy. But, this weekend, it was also a hive of intense gaming activity as EB Games opened up its annual vendor show to the public, as the EB Games Expo. To call it big is bit of an understatement, and the palpably excitement we felt on the show floor suggests it was a huge success.
Oddly, though, beyond "It was big..." well, there's not much else to say. This was a weekend for the punters, pure and simple. This late in the year, there was little new on show that hadn't been seen already at events like E3 or Gamescomm; so, for us, it was kind of odd to hang out and see so many excited folks.
But it's worth remembering that for Australian gamers, this was an amazing level of access to new and upcoming games.
Take Bethesda's stand as a perfect case in point. RAGE is already out, but folks were still crowding around to play it. There was a theatrette inside its stand, too, showing off footage of Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in aciton, but that was a recorded version of a live demo shown at E3 (and that we talk about here). However, reading isn't the same as seeing, and the folks queuing up around the stand were understandably hyped.
The show was split into two sections - the main show floor and an auditorium for giant and often live demos. We hung out for a bit in the packed auditorium, and the crowd was lapping up walkthroughs of Final Fantasy and Skyrim. The announcement that Final Fantasy would now have a jump button drew rapturous applause - this was a crowd eager for every snippet of info.
EA's stand was pretty epic, showing off a lot of Battlefield 3, along with the two DICE developers we spoke to last week (and who were being pretty heavily interviewed by Channel Nine while we were there). This is something we'd love ot see more of, especially if the show comes to Sydney next year - developer access, at public shows, is a great way to excite gamers of all kinds.
There was a lot of motion gaming on show, too, and EB itself had a rather small store onsite that always had large lines of punters waiting to get in.
Just as entertaining, though, were many of the guests, who dressed up as anime and game characters. From Minecraft to Mass Effect, pretty much every gamut of game was covered. The furries, though... I'm just not sure about. Alienware and NRG had PCs set up, as did Razer, so it was graet to see our favourite platform get a solid outing at a show rather dominated by dancing games and consoles.
Ultimately, though, it's not an event for press, so whatever we think of it is pretty much beside the point. We know some Atomicans were there (we even got stopped for a couple of photos!). So, if you were there, what did you guys think? How did it work as a consumer event?
Issue: 137 | June, 2012