PennyArcadeExpo
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Fermi cards launching March 26th
It's okay, we understand your confusion, but the news here isn't that NVIDIA uses CoTweet as its Twitter client. What's exciting is that the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 -- the company's first to use the new Fermi architecture -- are just over a month from release. Friday, March 26th, and given that also happens to coincidence with the kickoff date for Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East 2010 (of which NVIDIA is a major sponsor), we tend to think that's not just some convenient coincidence. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Penny Arcade Expo 2008 to showcase indie games
The annual Penny Arcade Expo has quickly evolved from being simply a gathering of video game enthusiasts to becoming one of our most anticipated gaming conferences each year. We never know what we're going to see there first hand, from fresh rhymes to Metroid attacks, and this year's event, taking place from August 29-31, looks to up the ante with a showcase of independent games called PAX 10.Event organizers are currently seeking indie talent to show off during the event, and devs can submit their creations online for consideration from now until May 7, after which a panel of 50 "industry experts," including PA's own Gabe and Tycho, will decide which ten submissions represent the crème of the crop based on gameplay and that all important "fun factor." The home-grown games will each be shown as part of the event's PAX 10 exhibit, and attendees will be able to vote on which one tickles their fancy, with the one garnering the most votes being lifted up following the expo on the Penny Arcade website as the Audience Choice Award winner. But with just a touch over two months remaining, time is running short -- if you're a would-be developer you've already wasted precious minutes reading this post! Get cracking!
Penny Arcade Expo exhibitor list unleashed
The exhibitor list for this year's Penny Arcade Expo has been made, checked twice, and finalized. While the past exhibitors are all still present (including favorites Pink Godzilla), the major publishers have signed up en masse. Joining Nintendo and Microsoft this year on the super-sized list of 53 exhibitors are Sony, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sierra and Konami, among many others. Indie representation will be provided Gamecock, Telltale, and more. Is that the shadow of E3 we see before us? Full list after the break.
U rappin' good? Go to Penny Arcade Expo for free
U Gotta Believe!Sony is hosting a new contest, encouraging wannabe rappers to perform their best PaRappa rap. It just takes some ambition, a camera, and some YouTube know-how to enter. Choose one of three songs provided on Sony's official contest page, and swallow your pride.There are some awesome prizes: PaRappa PSP skins, PaRappa PSP charms, PaRappa's signature beanie and a copy of the game. The first 100 entrants will get the awesome PaRappa tee. Finally, one winner will get to go to Penny Arcade Expo with a friend ... absolutely free. If you're thinking of entering, definitely show us. We'd love to see your moves!
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Hardcore gamers have a soft spot for the DS at PAX
Recently, we provided hard evidence that to children, the DS is far, far greater than that other handheld. Now, dear readers, we're ready to offer incontrovertible truth that the same standard holds when one looks to the few, the proud, the hardcore gamers. They're everywhere in the photos from PAX -- the Nintendo DS is just insidious like that. But hey, when you're waiting around, what better way to pass the time?Another picture after the jump.
Joystiq's own Chris G. sweats it out at the PAX new media panel
Our own Christopher Grant filled in today for an arguably hotter, but sadly absent, Frag Doll in PAX's "new media" panel on blogging, podcasts and other fancy publishing formats on them there Internets. He sat down with Kotaku's Brian Crecente, Julianne Greer from The Escapist, and MC Wilson from the Broadcast Gamer podcast, while Major Nelson moderated, gracefully playing the role of "corporate shill" (we're just playin'). The Web 2.0 buzzwords flew, Google Ad-Words were firmly promoted, NDAs were promptly scoffed, and Chris and Brian managed to leave the stage without resorting to fisticuffs. (Sad, yes.) E3 was a hot topic of debate -- even Major Nelson called it a mystery for Microsoft -- and all the panelists were unsure about the methods of coverage that will be available to them next year. An audience member mentioned that the Consumer Electronics Association (producers of that little Vegas show known as CES) are considering filling the gap, as we mentioned earlier this month, but it was still clear that future gaming shows are quite the mystery other than this weekend's obvious hit: PAX. We hope you can forgive this bit of utter meta vanity -- we'll now return you to your regularly scheduled programming -- but first, Chris would like to thank his Mom and his insatiable hunger for brains for making all of this possible. Oh, and if you'd like to hear the full discussion, Major Nelson should be posting it as a podcast soon, in true new media fashion.
Nintendo's PAX booth tour
Just like Microsoft, Nintendo was a tad cramped in the PAX exhibition hall -- their full setup could've squeezed into a small corner of their Wii extravaganza at E3. But they're making the best of things with an all DS all the time booth, and quite a few new games on display such as Yoshi's Island 2 and Final Fantasy III. We can't deny we're a bit disappointed by the Wii's absence, and the resulting lines would've been fun to see as well, but it's not hard to see why Nintendo opted to keep their little mysterious console off the floor. Of course, with no plans by Nintendo to show the Wii at the Tokyo Games Show, we're starting to wonder if it'll show up in "public" at all before its still-undefined launch, but we suppose we'll see it when we see it.
Microsoft's PAX booth tour
Yeah, we're kicking it here with our Joystiq pals in beautiful Redmond, Washington for a weekend of rubbing shoulders with the game-nerd elite. PAX's 17,000+ attendees this year are bursting the Meydenbauer Center at the seams, which means exhibitors like Microsoft can't quite have their usual sprawl of a booth. Luckily, they're moving the show -- which is now the biggest games show in North America thanks to the demise of E3 -- to downtown Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center next year, so hopefully the claustrophobic among us will be able to manage a step through a booth in '07. Keep reading for pics of the setup, and start saving your pennies for next year's extravaganza.
PAX: Alex St. John's keynote of infamy
Alex St. John breaks Washington State laws by smoking onstageAlex St. John, the creator of Microsoft's DirectX API and founder of Wild Tangent, delivered a bizarre, and borderline unbelievable, PAX keynote yesterday. With equal parts alien spaceships, hostage negotiations, enormous 10' vaginas (courtesy of GWAR), Bill Gates embarrassing promotional video career and, of course, Microsoft's Julia Child's Wine Guide CD-ROM, I'd be doing a serious disservice to Mr. St. John if I attempted to encapsulate his performance.What a performance! The keynote began with St. John tossing out large balls (that later took on an infamy all their own), mini glow-in-the-dark frisbees, and ping pong balls before he began his sordid tale. St. John began playing with decaptitated moose heads in Alaska as a child and ended up being the creator of DirectX at Microsoft as they entered the increasingly lucrative video game space. Of course, this journey was wrought with crazy situations (see aforementioned 10' vagina) and a fair amount of trepidation on the entire software community's part (a Windows blue screen at a developer's event was met with chants of "DOS, DOS, DOS!"). Despite these difficulties, the successful launch of the DirectX-Box means that Alex St. John has left an indelible impression on the gaming industry.Here's our question: instead of doing keynotes and running software companies, why isn't this guy writing a tell-all book to prove that gaming has its own wild, rockstar tales?[Thanks to Philip Palermo for the classy pic]
Got any questions for the PAX panels?
Penny Arcade's resident bidness man, Robert Khoo, is asking the PA forum posters to think of stock questions to keep the Q&A panels going. Here's the list of events: Girls? Games? Hah! The Growing Role of Women in the Game Industry The Domination of Online Games Breaking into the Game Industry How the Industry is Busted and What's Being Done to Fix It. Make a Game For Under 10 Grand: Indy Games in the Hardcore Space I'm Getting Old: When Life Cuts Into Gaming Blogphotopodcasting: New Media in the Game Industry Rolling the Saving Throw: Why the Tabletop Genre Isn't Dead Go to the linked PA forum page and add your questions via the format "#. question" (e.g., 6. What's more important -- baby sitting or Geometry Wars?).
PAX venue will triple in size in 2007
According to a press release sent out today, the 2007 Penny Arcade Expo will be "triple the size of [the 2006 venue], and we've already begun to receive reservations for booth space from AAA publishers." Despite the massive growth, Penny Arcade's resident business guru, Robert Khoo, expressed a desire to keep PAX about the community. "We don't want to be E3," he said.This years, over 17,000 people are expected to attend PAX. With triple the venue size, we can presume triple the attendance (the demand will be there, we suspect). A 2007 Penny Arcade Expo with around 51,000 attendees, puts it just under the size of E3 2006 (60,000 people). With such an influx of people and a growing list of major publishers, can Tycho and Gabe, Inc., manage to keep the sensationalism out?The 2006 Penny Arcade Expo runs from August 25 to 27 in Bellevue, Washington.
PAX versus Min-E3. Round one. FIGHT!
The logic goes: the giant void left where E3 used to reside will need to be filled. On Sunday, our first response was to write, "If the ESA doesn't manage to get the big guys back on board, another organizer will step in within the next 18 months with a show that will take E3's crown as the king of gaming trade shows." Could this dark horse expo be Penny Arcade's gamer-centric PAX? Gabe writes: "With a projected attendance of something like 13 thousand people and exhibitors like Nintendo, Ubisoft, Microsoft and ATI PAX is in position to pick up where E3 left off. Apparently we're not the only ones who noticed either."He contributes some other thoughts on the possibility noting that they've encountered a great deal of interest in exhibition space for PAX '07. With many of E3's biggest critics (like Greg Costikyan) wondering why the ESA didn't "throw the 'trade only' restriction out the window, open it up to actual gamers, charge them enough to make big bux for the ESA, ramp up attendance from 40k to 100k plus, and make it an event where publishers market to consumers as well as the trade," PAX does seem exceptionally well placed to capitalize on the failings of E3. If PAX evolved into something much larger, it could risk losing the personal touch the pair strive for, but it could resuscitate the not-yet rotting corpse of our fair E3. We'll be there regardless, how about you?
Going to PAX? Try carpooling with strangers
Alright, two groups are organizing carpooling convoys to transport PAX attendees from their places of origin to Seattle, WA. Let's put our math caps on. I'll use myself as a test case:From Philadelphia to Seattle is about 2,848 miles. Averaging 25 mpg highway, I'd use approximately 114 gallons of gas o' line. With the national average for gasoline at $2.87 right now, gas for the trip would hit $327 ... one way! Split between, let's say, 3 other people, we're talking $163 per person for gas round trip. If you're super cheap and eat horribly, throw another $50 on for edibles for the two day trip.*Sure, the math doesn't work out great, but it's not about the money, it's about the experience. Imagine it: 48 hours of non-stop portable gaming with fellow nerds on a pilgrimage to nerd mecca. That's what it's all about ... that said, we're not sure we'll be going by automobile, but Joystiq will be on hand to congratulate any SuperTrippers upon their arrival.*Same thing applies for the west coast SuperTrip, except they're not nearly as hardcore and all relevant figures should be adjusted to reflect that.Read - Cross-Country Super TripRead - West Coast Super Trip(Update: stupid spelling error corrected; punishment administered.)
