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The E3 Media and Business Summit (formerly known as Electronic Entertainment Expo) and commonly known as E3, is an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry presented by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). It is used by many video game developers to show off their upcoming games and game-related hardware.

E3 is invitation-only since 2007, reducing the amount of attendees from 60,000 at E3 2006 to the 3,000-5,000 of E3 2007. A separate conference called Entertainment for All Expo has been created to accommodate the public demand for a major, annual video game event.



E3 was previously held in the third week of May of each year at the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) in Los Angeles. In 2007, the convention was exceptionally held from July 11 to July 13 in Santa Monica, California. The ESA said that the event reached a record attendance of 70,000 people in 2005.

The 2007 show was housed in suites and meeting rooms in numerous hotels in the Santa Monica area, within walking distance of each other. The Barker Hangar was used for showcasing software.


Show floor

Konami booth 2005When held in Los Angeles, the show was exhibited over five halls: Kentia, Petree, South Hall, Concourse Hall, and the West Hall. Booth space was purchased ahead of time by publishers. Some publishers, in turn, spent millions of dollars creating elaborate displays and structures to accommodate the promotion of their bigger titles.

While E3 was noted as being noisy and busy, sound levels are not what they once were; in recent years (2005, 2006), publishers like EA have kept their sound down compared to years directly before. At one point, sound levels would fluctuate as exhibitors raised the volume to compete with near by stands. Shouting was common at some stands. Meanwhile, in 2006, when attendance was down to 10,000, according to the organizers, it was a planned move as industry accreditation was stringently checked. VGEXPO had nearly ten times the number of attendees.


'Booth babes' at E3 2005Different booths would also invite celebrities over for signings for their specific games. For 2004, Activision brought in Stan Lee and Tony Hawk to promote X-Men Legends and Tony Hawk's Underground 2 respectively while Vivendi Universal brought in Vin Diesel to promote his new game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a prequel to the summer 2004 film. Celebrities were generally only available for a few hours, so line-waiting was a general practice at E3.


Rockstar’s invite-only enclosure at E3 2005
Concourse Hall and lobbies
The external apparatus that connects the bigger halls is the Concourse Hall and subsequently, the West Hall and South Hall lobbies. The lobbies were used for registration, picking up badges and badge holders, and other general information. Bag stands and the daily magazine were available in the lobbies. The lobbies were also the signature glass structures of the LACC and were massive structures.

The Concourse Hall generally featured four booths and a few media outlets as well as the Into the Pixel game art exhibition started at E3 2004. The Concourse Hall was generally used as a link between both lobbies and featured a window display with a beautiful view of downtown Los Angeles.


South Hall
The largest ship of the LACC and the largest exhibition space by default. Microsoft and many of the largest Western developers from North America and Europe generally found their homes here.


Kentia and Petree Halls
The second smallest and smallest ship respectively. The RMN Petree was the indefinite home to Atari and Midway's massive booths. The RMN Kentia was generally used by smaller developers who could not afford the hefty fees of having a booth 'planetside'. As a result, the look of the RMN Kentia at E3 was similar to that of a bazaar.


West Hall
The RMN "West Hall" was used by the biggest publishers from Asia. Nintendo and Sony's booths are normally located here. The RMN "West Hall" was also normally temporally home to private press rooms, and sometimes TV studios, of large gaming media outlets such as IGN, 1UP.com, GameSpy, and GameSpot.

Many websites and blogs have a history of providing extensive coverage of E3 with live webcasts, game previews, game media and blog entries covering popular press events. Some of the more popular sites include, but are not limited to IGN, GameSpot, Kotaku, 1UP.com, GamesRadar, Gametrailers, Advanced Media Network and VGCore.com.

On site, the event is covered by professional journalists from around the world. Proof of credentials are verified before the event or on-site. Originally E3 was almost entirely dominated by print games journalists, the event eventually came to include general and specialist TV crews, newspaper journalists, website journalists, and ‘fansite’ journalists. Many of these attendees came with consumer-level digital video and photograph cameras.


The E3 press roomOn behalf of the organizers, Future Publishing now publishes the free official daily magazine, named in 2006 as ‘The 2006 Official Show Daily’. Previously published by Ziff Davis under "SHOWDAILY", the magazine provides news, and maps of the show floor.

G4 has aired live coverage of E3 2005, 2006 and 2007, covering three hours a day over 4 days in the week of the event.

An episode of The Showbiz Show featured Andrew Daly getting live coverage from E3.