Today is the first day of the 2008 edition of the E For All Expo, the self-proclaimed "North America's premiere video game event." to be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The first event, held in 2007, was heavily hyped beforehand with the expo's organizers, the IDG World Expo, predicting in interviews with their CEO that they were expecting between 20,000 and 30,000 attendees. In the end the event only brought in 18,000 attendees and only five major game publishers exhibited at the event.

This year's edition hasn't gotten nearly as much hype as the inaugural event, possibly because there's even less participation from the actual game industry than last year. Only three major game publishers (Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft) are scheduled to exhibit at the event, compared to last August's Penny Arcade Expo, which had over 20 publishers showing their upcoming games. Furthermore, the 2008 edition of E For All will be a three day event as opposed to the 2007 show which stretched over four days. Even the venue itself has gotten smaller. The 2007 event was held in the LA Convention Center's large South Hall while the 2008 show is being held in the building's West Hall which is about half the South Hall's size.The show's organizers have tried to make up for E For All's lack of game publishers by holding not one but two separate pro game tournaments; the US finals of the World Cyber Games and the Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge. The retailer Target will sell games and products at the event as well as sponsor a Guitar Hero World Tour tournament. The organizers have even added non-gaming events such as the Los Angeles International Children's Film Festival to attract attendees.

Yet the message seems to be fairly clear; the game industry has a whole has not embraced E For All and its organizers have been scrambling to find ways to give attendees an excuse to come to the 2008 show. Big Download has repeatedly asked for an interview with an IDG World Expo exec to get more info on the show and how they feel about the event's lack of game publishers but all our requests have so far been ignored.