pax-prime posts

Last month, all the three day tickets for PAX Prime 2010 sold out. Now the official Penny Arcade Expo web site has posted word that all of the one day tickets for the Seattle game event next weekend are gone as well. So if you think you can just show up at the door of the Washington State Trade and Convention Center hoping to buy event a one day ticket, you can pretty much stay home.

Last's year's PAX Prime event also sold out a few days beforehand and managed to bring in 60,750 attendees. However this year's event could see a large increase in attendees due to the fact that the main theater for the show has been moved to a location a few minutes walk from the convention center. That means there's more exhibit hall space which means more people can now be allowed to attend.

Earlier this month rumors hit the internet that Gearbox Software had taken over full development of Duke Nukem Forever from 3d Realms. At the time Gearbox's head man Randy Pitchford would not admit to the rumor but told Kotaku that more info would be revealed at PAX Prime 2010. Now the schedule for PAX Prime on September 3-5 reveals that Gearbox will be hosting a panel where it claims that it will be showing "never before seen footage of upcoming Gearbox releases."

The PAX Prime Gearbox panel description claims that it will have "juicy exclusives, surprising disclosures, unbelievable scoops and behind the scenes access" to Gearbox's future plans. At the moment we do know that Gearbox is prepping to release a fourth DLC mini-expansion for its 2009 shooter-RPG hybrid Borderlands. Gearbox's web site currently shows three unannounced games listed along with Aliens: Colonial Marines, a long-in-development shooter for publisher Sega that Gearbox has said little about for nearly two years.

Let's put this week to bed, shall we? It's been a long and busy one for us here. And then we have PAX Prime coming in two weeks. Yipe!

• The destruction-themed game Demolition Company is now on Steam with a 15 percent discount for the next week.
• Sol Survivor gets a Steam bug fix update today.
• Check out this interesting interview (part one and part two) with Valve's Robin Walker on the future of Team Fortress 2.
• A new general Steam client update adds a tabbed interface for browsing and chatting.
• Check out the full exhibit hall map for PAX Prime. It's pretty massive!

E3 2010 is over and done with but that was an event for the game industry. No public folks were allowed. That's certainly not the case with the Seattle version of Penny Arcade Expo (also known as PAX Prime since the launch of PAX East last March) which has now become the biggest single game oriented event in the US in terms of attendence. The 2010 edition of PAX Prime will be held September 3-5 this year.

The PAX web site has been updated recently with word on some of the exhibitors that will be at the show. They include big time exhibitors like 2K Games, Capcom, EA, Ubisoft, and more. Also on the list is NCsoft who bypassed E3 this year and have already confirmed it will be showing off live demos of the upcoming and highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 for the first time in the US at PAX this year. Musical guests like Anamanaguchi, Jonathan Coulton, Metroid Metal, MC Frontalot, the Minibosses, The Protomen, and Paul & Storm have also been confirmed to play at PAX Prime this year. Registration is still going on but we suspect that, like last year, it will be a sell out before the show begins.

With just one more week and one more day until E3 2010 officially begins, we are wondering just how much skin we will see in the booth babes on the exhibit floor. However it looks like the booth babes at the Penny Arcade Expo's next show in September may not be showing as much as the above ladies did last year.

You may remember that PAX organizers launched a survey asking PAX fans what they though of its booth babe ban policy. The results have come in and 60 percent of those folks who answered the survey said they either loved or liked the ban. While it doesn't look like PAX will totally ban models at exhibit booths, they will ask them to be trained and/or educated about the product they are promoting. Partial nudity will be banned (although they don't define what that means exactly in this context) but cosplayers can still wear revealing clothing "assuming it is true to the source game". We should see how all of this works out in early September when PAX Prime launches in Seattle.

The first PAX East show in Boston last weekend seems to have been a success, but in just five months the first Penny Arcade Expo event (also known as PAX Prime) will be held in Seattle. Today the PAX web site started taking pre-registrations for the 2010 event which will be held on September 3-5 at the Washingtong State Convention and Trade Center. You can also reserve your hotel room for the show.

One day tickeks are $35 each while three day tickets will be $55. Prices are a bit higher than last year due to "the City of Seattle public event tax." It's likely that the three day tickets will sell out weeks, perhaps months, before the show begins.