You know you're in trouble when the biggest surprise comes in the form of timed exclusives. While the Sony conference certainly had a few "good for them" moments, the conference was mostly littered with games and products we already knew about. There were a number of surprises, but nothing like what we have seen in past E3 events. And that's the problem; this E3 was a known quantity. Outside of a few timed exclusives and one or two minor game announcements, this E3 was completely free of the "REAL BIG" surprises we're accustomed to. It wasn't boring, but there was no real drama either.

While it's fun to predict these crazy game announcements before E3, I completely understand that most of the time my dreams don't come true. I'm not disappointed that a new Punch Out wasn't introduced or that Knights of the Old Republic 3 wasn't shown, I figured those games were long shots. I'm more disappointed that nobody seemed to have anything up their sleeves. Nintendo had Mario Kart and Wii Fit, two games we already knew about. Sega showed off NiGHTS and Konami had Contra 4. But again, we already knew about those games. And while all of these products were solid titles, it's hard to get too excited about something that was announced weeks or months ago. It would have been nice if somebody would have had some big announcement, even if it was a third party. There's no denying that it's fun to play these games we've been hearing about for months, but it doesn't take the place of hearing about some new amazing product that won't be coming out until 2008 or later. This just wasn't the year for those REAL BIG surprises, and that was the biggest disappointment of E3.

This year's E3 came in two flavors: air conditioned and hellish hot! If you hung out at the various hotels then chances are the heat never played a part in your day. No matter what hotel the company was at, nearly every room was furnished with wonderful air conditioning. And that's not all, most of the companies had cold water and drinks to give out, making sure that you were as comfortable as possible while playing their games. Life was good for the hotel people; they had catered food and plenty of chairs to sit on. There weren't that many people around, it was never too noisy, and performing interviews was a dream come true.

Unfortunately once you leave the comfort of the hotel it's all downhill from there. Take one step into Barker Hanger and you're reminded of the inescapable heat that plagued the old convention center. Barker Hanger had poor ventilation, no open windows/doors, and a lot of people (and electronics) making the event feel as hot and uncomfortable as possible. It was common to see people sweat while they playing Guitar Hero III or Wii Fit. And it wasn't just the active games; I could feel my shirt getting damp just thinking about playing Super Mario Galaxy or Contra 4. Towards the end of the show I started to feel bad for the PR people working Barker Hanger, especially after seeing their hotel-dwelling co-workers working in the lap of luxury. I don't know what they had to do to get sent to the pits of E3 hell, but I'm glad I wasn't in their sweat-filled shoes!

One of the most important parts of each year's E3 usually comes a few days before the event. All of the biggest news is generally reserved for the Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo press conferences, where these major players announce new games and hardware. But this year was a little different, the big three companies weren't the only players to host their own conferences. This year companies like Electronic Arts, Konami and Midway all had their day in the sun, something that was a little hit and miss at times.

While we can argue all day about how relevant these conferences were, the biggest problem was the complete lack of new information. Where Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all had major announcements, Konami and Midway just showed off games we already knew about. Worse yet, they were all held at the same place. This meant that the press would have to stand in line to get in, find a seat, and then listen to each company talk about their newest wares. After one of the companies finished all of the journalists were kicked out and forced to stand in line, find a seat, and listen to what the next company said. This repeated several times, which is extremely annoying given that it was the same group of people going from one conference to the other. It's even worse for those journalists lugging around large cameras. This was a massive waste of time and one repetitive experience I hope to never go through again.

In past years most of the E3 excitement was kept to one centralized area. While some companies would splinter off and show their wares at the Staples Center, 99% of the companies attending E3 were situated somewhere in the Los Angeles Convention Center. While this made everything hectic and loud, this set-up was perfect for just about everybody involved. All it took to see the major and minor players was a little walking, generally from one side of the convention center to the other. As I've already explained, the centralized location is a thing of the past. This year's E3 was spread out over several hotels twelve miles apart.

That's not to say that this year's E3 didn't have some sort of centralized location. For whatever reason, many of the companies decided to show a few games at Barker Hanger as well as their hotel room. It wasn't an issue of some companies being exclusive to Barker Hanger and others only having a hotel room, nearly all of the companies showing off their games in Barker Hanger also featured products in some hotel miles away. This led me to wonder just what the purpose of Barker Hanger was. Take away the Barker Hanger aspect and you would have a much more pleasant time of going from hotel room to hotel room, all of which were in easy to get to locations. It was Barker Hanger that was out of the way and pointless. Couldn't the organizers have just spent the money on a few more hotel rooms instead of making us go from these nice rooms to a hot, ugly hanger? This split also affected the companies who were forced to have people at both locations just in case. The only good thing that came out of Barker Hanger was the free parking.

I never thought I would say this, but where is everybody? Part of me actually misses all of the people that used to go to E3. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for E3 to balloon back up to sixty to seventy thousand people. But would it hurt E3 to be more than three thousand invited guests? I have a lot of friends from small websites who didn't get the invite but wanted to go. It would have been great to meet up with them and co-mingle with all of the bigwigs. But this year's E3 was only open to around three thousand people, which certainly made it easier to play all of the games I wanted to play.

Beyond the size issue, part of the problem I have is that I'm not real sure how the invite thing worked. I'm happy that two of the Defunct Games staffers were invited to the event, but we could have used another body down there to help us cover this spread out show. Who decided on who gets to go, and what do we do next year to make sure we can get a few more people in? I'm not looking for a mad rush of people or anything, but another two or three thousand people in the industry won't hurt anybody. I even found that some of the exhibitors felt like they weren't showing their wares off to enough journalists. If the organizers could clarify their criteria that would probably resolve a number of issues. I wouldn't be opposed to a slightly larger convention where the invites aren't nearly as ambiguous as they were this year ... just as long as it's not spread out over 12 miles!

I know, I know, you don't go to E3 for the schwag. This is a business summit that is meant to be taken seriously. And while I'm guilty of grabbing every shirt, magnet, poster, water bottle, and pen I could find, part of me was relieved that I didn't have to pack a second suitcase with nothing but crap I'll never even open and look at. But this year was weird; it was as if there was no schwag at all. If you're one of those people who went to E3 looking for the free crap, then this year's event was definitely not worth attending.

Then again, if you were willing to look around you would actually find a few neat little pieces of useless crap that you could take home with you. I'm a big fan of the Trauma Center pen that is shaped like a syringe. I also like the Fall Out 3 shirts and the E3 baseball hats. It's also worth noting that there was a booth babe handing out shirts advertising something I had never heard of. I would spend this time advertising for them, but they gave us a size medium. Size medium, really?? This is a video game convention, not a junior high band concert. There's only one person who can wear a medium shirt at E3, and that was the booth babe handing the shirts out! Thanks for the thought, but you really should know your audience before you start giving out medium shirts.