So as you probably already know, I spent the last couple days hopping the trains and heading into Los Angeles for some E3 action courtesy of Xbox. I have posted a couple pics and thoughts about things, but now that it is over (for me anyway) and the afterglow has faded, I can finally sit down and put thoughts down on what I saw and the whole experience in general.
Last week I was doing some interwebs browsing and started doing research into going to some of the E3 events open to the public (Bethesda, EA, and so on) and I came across an advert on Xbox.com about some Xbox Fan Fest thing. Basically what it was is that they were going to give away 500 tickets to the Xbox press conference at E3 and if there were more than 500 people they were going to raffle them off. The caveat was that if you were a winner, you had to spend the night camping out at the mall until the store opened the next morning to collect your ticket and swag bag.
Well, 800 people showed up for the event and things got friggin' nuts. The raffle part of the evening was just one big clusterf*ck. I honestly don't think the organizers excpected that many people to show up considering last year they didn't reach 500 people until 9:00 in the morning. Having passed out 800+ tickets, the organizers then proceeded to hand pull all 500 winners and call them out individually. No megaphone, no system of organization other than a tablet to keep track of the numbers, and zero fun. That part of the evening took about two hours or so.
After all 500 numbers were called (yes, I was one of the lucky 500) we settled in for the night setting up our little area with whatever we brought. In my case I slept in a folding beach chair with a hoodie for warmth (the nights get freaking cold in LA). The next morning we all woke up with anticipation.
Before the store opened the organizers gave away some cool hardware - chat pads, driving wheels, headsets - to people posting on social media. One of the guys I was hanging with won a headset and another won a $200 racing wheel, so these weren't cheap-o freebies. After the giveaways a couple people went through the crowd and scanned everyone's badges. Random badges had different things possibly attached to them. I actually got a ticket to go to the Bethesda press conference later that evening, but I gave it away since I couldn't attend. You know, family stuff and all that.
This is dragging out a little long so I'll try to sum it up here. Monday we get to go to the press conference and right before we go in Phil Spencer comes out to announce that we all also have passes to the floor of E3. And the crowd goes wild! It was a fantastical moment. After the press conference we got shuttled to The Petersen Automotive Museum, which was cool, but not my thing. After an hour or so our group got a ride back to pick up our E3 passes.
After picking up the passes we headed over to EA play where I got to play Titanfall 2 (woohoo!) and Battlefield 1 (meh). I also met Todd McFarlane who is one cool MFer.
So after getting home late Monday evening I had E3 to look forward to on Tuesday and Wednesday. Microsoft also did a Fan Fest thing at a theater downtown where we got to talk to the cast of Gears 4, really cool, they let us watch Central Intelligence before it's released, pretty funny, and they gave us all codes to design our own controllers and get them for free. Needless to say, everybody was pretty stoked.
The really cool thing is is that if a person was not one of the lucky fans to win the raffle in the beginning, but they still camped out, Xbox gave them all the perks that the original 500 got as well. They still got to go to the press conference - although they didn't sit right on the floor - they still got E3 tickets, and they still got to go to the private event and get a custom controller.
There's a lot of debate on who "won" E3. I don't see Sony doing this for any fans here. I don't see Nintendo doing anything like this. It seems to me that Xbox is really trying to give back to us, and I'm glad I could be a part of it. It was a really awesome week and a fun time meeting and chatting with Major Nelson, Phil Spencer, and Chris Munson (he's who sets this up every year). I don't want to sound like a gushing fanboy, but I guess that's what I am.
-F
Last week I was doing some interwebs browsing and started doing research into going to some of the E3 events open to the public (Bethesda, EA, and so on) and I came across an advert on Xbox.com about some Xbox Fan Fest thing. Basically what it was is that they were going to give away 500 tickets to the Xbox press conference at E3 and if there were more than 500 people they were going to raffle them off. The caveat was that if you were a winner, you had to spend the night camping out at the mall until the store opened the next morning to collect your ticket and swag bag.
Well, 800 people showed up for the event and things got friggin' nuts. The raffle part of the evening was just one big clusterf*ck. I honestly don't think the organizers excpected that many people to show up considering last year they didn't reach 500 people until 9:00 in the morning. Having passed out 800+ tickets, the organizers then proceeded to hand pull all 500 winners and call them out individually. No megaphone, no system of organization other than a tablet to keep track of the numbers, and zero fun. That part of the evening took about two hours or so.
After all 500 numbers were called (yes, I was one of the lucky 500) we settled in for the night setting up our little area with whatever we brought. In my case I slept in a folding beach chair with a hoodie for warmth (the nights get freaking cold in LA). The next morning we all woke up with anticipation.
Before the store opened the organizers gave away some cool hardware - chat pads, driving wheels, headsets - to people posting on social media. One of the guys I was hanging with won a headset and another won a $200 racing wheel, so these weren't cheap-o freebies. After the giveaways a couple people went through the crowd and scanned everyone's badges. Random badges had different things possibly attached to them. I actually got a ticket to go to the Bethesda press conference later that evening, but I gave it away since I couldn't attend. You know, family stuff and all that.
This is dragging out a little long so I'll try to sum it up here. Monday we get to go to the press conference and right before we go in Phil Spencer comes out to announce that we all also have passes to the floor of E3. And the crowd goes wild! It was a fantastical moment. After the press conference we got shuttled to The Petersen Automotive Museum, which was cool, but not my thing. After an hour or so our group got a ride back to pick up our E3 passes.
After picking up the passes we headed over to EA play where I got to play Titanfall 2 (woohoo!) and Battlefield 1 (meh). I also met Todd McFarlane who is one cool MFer.
So after getting home late Monday evening I had E3 to look forward to on Tuesday and Wednesday. Microsoft also did a Fan Fest thing at a theater downtown where we got to talk to the cast of Gears 4, really cool, they let us watch Central Intelligence before it's released, pretty funny, and they gave us all codes to design our own controllers and get them for free. Needless to say, everybody was pretty stoked.
The really cool thing is is that if a person was not one of the lucky fans to win the raffle in the beginning, but they still camped out, Xbox gave them all the perks that the original 500 got as well. They still got to go to the press conference - although they didn't sit right on the floor - they still got E3 tickets, and they still got to go to the private event and get a custom controller.
There's a lot of debate on who "won" E3. I don't see Sony doing this for any fans here. I don't see Nintendo doing anything like this. It seems to me that Xbox is really trying to give back to us, and I'm glad I could be a part of it. It was a really awesome week and a fun time meeting and chatting with Major Nelson, Phil Spencer, and Chris Munson (he's who sets this up every year). I don't want to sound like a gushing fanboy, but I guess that's what I am.
-F
