Russell Burrows

http://kotaku.com/5007647/six-publis...-esa-president

By: Brian Crecente and Leigh Alexander

Rumored developer displeasure with Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher may be partially to blame for nearly half a dozen member publishers dropping out of this year's E3 conference, Kotaku has learned.

This morning we broke the news that not only are Vivendi and Activision not attending this year's E3 they've both decided to drop out of the association all together. We've since learned that NCSoft, Her Interactive and id Software have all decided not to attend this year's show, though they are all remaining members of the association.

Only NCSoft had returned calls about the decision as of press time, saying that their decision to not attend E3 this year, the first time they won't in the company's history, was due to the development cycle of their games and in no way reflects on the ESA or it's leadership.

But several industry sources who wish to remain anonymous say Gallagher is in part to blame for issues surrounding this year's E3.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter also believes that the drop-outs are spurred by decisions made by Gallagher, who he says is less knowledgeable and sophisticated than his predecessor, Doug Lowenstein.

"Lowenstein was a very savvy industry veteran who paid attention to the goings-on in the industry and cared what the community had to say," Pachter said. "The new person.. whose name completely escapes me because I've never met him or heard from him, is far less knowledgeable and sophisticated about this industry than Doug was and is going to make some rookie mistakes."

"Doug used to be a very visible spokesperson in congress... when you'd get these [things like] Barack Obama saying videogames are corrupting our youth or MADD saying that Take-Two should pull GTA off t he shelves, you would hear Lowenstein immediately shoot back. I would guess that Activision doesn't perceive the same value from the ESA as they did under Doug's leadership. I criticize [Gallagher's] lack of drive to learn about the industry."

While the ESA and Gallagher declined to comment for this story, several sources tell us that Gallagher has come under fire for what is perceived as his poor handling of the association.

In March, GamePolitics reported that the ESA shuttered its New York office, and in so doing fired that office's head, senior VP and general counsel Gail Markels. Markels, who reportedly earned $317,000 in 2005, successfully led all the ESA's litigation efforts against unconstitutional video game laws.

The ESA apparently trimmed its lobbying initiatives throughout 2007 while budgets rose, according to a report made by GameSpot on public filings. Last year, the Association spent a record $2.86 million on lobbying — even though it chose to confront fewer issues, removing lobbying on online gambling, taxation of virtual property, and Internet privacy in favor of focusing solely on constitutional, copyright and relevant trade issues.

Pachter points to the timing of this year's E3 as another mistep. He believes that the new July date just doesn't work out for Activision and Vivendi for financial reasons. Most game companies have a financial quarter that ends in June. Those companies usually have to observe a two-week "quiet period" following the end of the quarter, during which they may not speak to investors — and Pachter says that Activision is especially strict about observing theirs to the minute.

With that in mind, the July E3 is just financially inopportune for both Activision and Vivendi based on the schedules of their fiscal quarters.

"And a Vivendi that feels snubbed could be a big detriment to the ESA, Pachter said. "Vivendi's revenues are so heavily from online subscriptions, which technically don't fall under the ESA... but if ESA ever cares to represent the MMO companies, they really have to have Blizzard as part of their consortium. And there's no question that the market in 20 years is going to shift to a more heavily-utilized download model."

Activision and Vivendi, for their part, say the decision to not renew their membership in the ESA this year was purely a business one.

"After careful consideration, Activision has decided not to renew its ESA membership for business reasons and will not be participating in any official E3 activities. We appreciate the work that the ESA has done over the years in promoting the interactive entertainment industry with state and federal governments and wish the ESA best of luck with the show."

Vivendi sent a similar statement to us today. Both declined to comment about Gallagher's leadership of the ESA.

Activision did confirm with us that while they will not be attending the show, they will be holding an event on the first day of E3, though not at the convention center. Vivendi has not yet commented on whether they will be showing outside of the convention center during the show's week.

The ESA contacted us after the story went live to clarify that Codemasters will be attending E3 afterall.

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Never play with a wasps nest.

cAtDaFeLiX

Lucky I'm half asleep reading that. That's a huge read. This is going to cause many companys to start doing single events. Like Nintendo or Sony game days. It might be the crack in the dam that will send E3 to hell and to never come back.



It was a really cool show back when the "real" E3 was around. Lucky PSX Extreme invited me in 2004 to go and report for the site. If E3 does fall apart. I'm going to make all the vids and images I took at that show avail to all forum members here. It's been 4 years and the silent must be broken! lol.

You try to put nearly 9 hours of dvd video on to a dvd. I remb when I got back that it took me 4 hours to put together a 2min 30 sec clip.

Lucky, I have new video editing software that will be alot better than that program I used back in 04. Me will see what's going to happen.

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psplayer

Wouldn't E3 go to heaven, cat? lol

But really this would be sad... I always get excited when E3 came around, all the awesome news and previews, and I always hoped to go to it at least once myself..

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When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.

Russell Burrows

Rumor.

ESA Offices. DAY_INT.
So you ESA folks want two hundred grand and all of the good spots are taken and we have to do everything YOU say at your event.
So....................ummmmm we left our credit cards in our Lear jet so we will get back to you on that.


Activision. DAY_ INT.
A few hours later.
...................and the ESA guy just stood there when we handed out the line of our credit cards being back at the jet....................ha,ha,ha,ha,ha what a jerk.
.................................................. .........................................


Try backing the event up on twoor three DVD 5 discs as data files in an MT2ts container with dolby digital 5.1 audio and

Try using mkvcreate to make a container with a 5 to 9 MBS bitrate with the 5.1 dolby digital audio.

I do this when I want to backup a 30 gig bluray movie onto a single dvd 5 disc.

I.e. cars bluray as I keep the original disc and made a dvd 5 size backup that plays on the PS3 with an AVC bitrate of 5MBS to 11 MBS with dolby digital 5.1

Try the freeware MKVto VOB as it excels at re containerizing your mkv container into an MT2ts file with 5.1 dolby digital that the PS3 is happy to read and play back with FF, REW, pause, frame advance, frame reverse.

Use Nero wave editor) nero 7) and the freeware Audacity to clean up your audio and add effects.

Or make a torrent at mininova with the original file and I am very sure that some folks,hint, hint, will give a hand with audio cleanup, conversion to Advanced Video Codec or AVCHD with dolby 2.0 or preferably dolby 5.1 in an MT2ts file.

Well its time to try out some threepoint lighting on a car interior for a scene so gotta go.
Later.

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Never play with a wasps nest.

cAtDaFeLiX

That's true, it would go to heaven lol and the past booth babes can come to my house. lol

Nice man, thanks for the info. I was using a crappy version of a program I can't remb the name of lol. The 9 hours of DVD video can be cut up due to me just filming non stop the first day lol.

I'm now using the Ulead Videostudio 10. it's a great program with many layers and a 5.1 audio mix built in. It's a couple of years old now and it still works great. My DVD cam is not HD, but it's pretty good. I need to get back into video editing lol.

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Russell Burrows

Lucasarts drops ESA membership.................via www.gamasutra.com
Looks like developers are still mad at ESA membership fees that only go towards ESA pockets and no benefits for developers.

Lets see as there are at least three more game developers whoare pondering dropping ESA membership.

__________________
Never play with a wasps nest.