E3 has shrunk. We already knew this, because the reports about it have been circulating for almost a year now, but the true scale of the shrinkage was made clear today. The official E3 arena has gone from the 5 gazillion square foot Los Angeles Convention Center to the 35,000 square foot Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. Not only that, but only about 2/3 of the space will be in use. Twelve of the exhibitors are going for large displays, each having a booth 20 feet on a side, and the additional 15 companies attending will have meeting rooms roughly 10 feet by 20. This is going to take some getting used to.

The dozen companies getting the “large” booths are the usual big names-

Microsoft

Nintendo

Sony

Sony Online Entertainment

EA

Capcom

Vivendi

Square Enix

Namco-Bandai

Konami

Sega

THQ

And in the 15 smaller meeting rooms are-

Activision

Akella

Atari

Atlus

Buena Vista

Crave

Eidos

id

Majesco

Midway

NCSoft

Playlogic

Take Two

Ubi Soft

Warner Bros.

E3 is a very different beast than it used to be, and the venue and its layout drive this home in a way all the press releases over the last several months haven’t. The flash and useless glamour is gone, and good riddance, but so is the sense of Epic that permeated the three days of the show. Oddly enough, now that there’s less to see, show hours have expanded to 9AM through 7PM. The extra hours and smaller venue should do nice things towards killing the exhaustion of covering the event, felt in the bone-weary feet of anyone who’s ever had to walk from the South to West halls of the LACC. Lets just hope there’s enough content to justify the time.