E3 is opening up to the public this year, a bid to inject some excitement into the massive video-gaming trade show after some major game publishers pulled out from the show floor.
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In a teaser video posted online Wednesday, the Entertainment Software Association trade group said it would make 15,000 tickets available for members of the public to attend this year’s trade show, scheduled for June in Los Angeles.
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The tickets, priced at $249, will go on sale at 9 a.m. Monday at the show’s website. The first 1,000 will be sold for $149.
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The trade show is the highlight of the video-game industry’s calendar, featuring announcements of new video-game titles and hardware. Attendance has traditionally been limited to the game industry and press, reflecting the show’s roots as a forum for retail buyers to meet with game publishers to determine what to put on store shelves during the holiday season.
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But the show has skewed more toward media spectacle recently, with publishers and game-platform owners like Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation hosting giant events during the weeklong conference, which is held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
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Some publishers have opted to leave the show floor entirely, avoiding the cost of a booth and E3’s controls. Electronic Arts, the maker of the Madden NFL and Battlefield franchises, last year set up its own bit of rival Los Angeles programming outside the walls of E3, called EA Play. Activision, maker of the world-beating Call of Duty games, also didn’t have its own booth last year.
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E3 has experimented with tweaking the makeup of its show in recent years, adding a few thousand video-game internet streaming celebrities and other influencers. The show last year also included a fan-focused event held near EA Play, though attendees to that event couldn’t walk the show floor itself.
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This year’s iteration of…