EA boss: I hated E3 2008

Monday 21st July 2008 - 17:00

Major publishers disappointed with trade show, thought controlled gaming could be on the way and Project Origin screenshots

The dust has once again settled for another year on E3, an event that has in the past been considered to be the leading videogames show in the world. Except this year some of the largest exhibitors have left with a very poor opinion of the show.

The trade only event has seen massive organisational changes over the last couple of years. Out went a lot of a the razzmatazz (and indeed access by the public) and in came a more reserved, smaller structure that clearly wasn't to the taste of many of the industry's heavy hitters.

EA head honcho John Riccitiello was particularly scathing in his opinions. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle the EA CEO said: "I hate E3 like this. Either we need to go back to the old E3, or we'll have to have our own private events."

Riccitiello's disappointment with the apparent blandness of the show has been shared by Ubisoft's North American president Laurent Detoc, who added:"E3 this year is terrible. The world used to come to E3. Now it's like a pipe-fitters show in the basement."

What will this mean for next year's show? It looks fairly obvious that if the likes of EA and Ubisoft choose not to attend then there probably won't be much of a meaningful trade show anyway. Bring back the show girls is what we say!

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail has published what we consider to be a rather far fetched story about an Australian company called Emotiv. The Sydney-based organisation has apparently developed a videogames controller that operates on thoughts alone. The 16 sensors manage the brain activity of the gamer and replicate on-screen movement.

The report states: The EPOC headset has 16 sensors which measure electrical activity in the brain, allowing players to push and pull objects on a screen just by thinking. Despite scepticism among some experts, Emotiv claims it has carried out pre-release tests which show that the electroencephalography process works.' There's no news of when the EPOC headset will become commercially available.