pax posts

With two versions of the Penny Arcade Expo now in full swing, gamers only have to wait a few months rather than a whole year to get their PAX fix. Today registration has started for PAX Prime 2011, the show that started it all. It will be held once again at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle, Washington. The dates are August 26-28.

Advanced tickets for the show will be priced at $35 for each day or $60 for all three days. The show has been selling out of tickets a few days before it begins so if you want to make sure you can attend it's best to pony up the money ahead of time.

It's official. The second annual PAX East gaming event in Boston is officially sold out. The official Penny Arcade Expo web site has confirmed that all of the tickets for the March 11-13 event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center are spoken for. In case that wasn't clear, the web site states, "We will not sell any (tickets) at the show. There are no more available. Please do not email us asking if this is a real thing. It is real. I'm serious."

For those of you lucky enough to have tickets to PAX East 2011 the web site has some helpful info for attendees including the fact that it will be first come, first serve for attending the Friday and Saturday night concerts. There will also be a giant food court created especially for the show in the convention center since there are not many places to eat nearby.

With less than a month to go before PAX East 2011 starts in Boston, the gamer convention has posted up the schedule of panels that will be held during the event on March 11-13. There's a wide variety of subjects on the schedule but a couple stand out. One is that id Software team members will be giving a live demo of its upcoming first person shooter Rage on March 11 and again on March 12.

The other panel of note is the world's first public gameplay demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the upcoming single player fantasy RPG from developers Big Huge Games and 38 Studios. By the way, the official PAX Twitter page has posted up word this weekend that "we only have a few hundred 3-days (tickets) left."

The two versions of the Penny Arcade Expo gaming event have been very successful with the PAX Prime event in Seattle bringing in over 60,000 attendees and the first PAX East in Boston launching in 2010 with over 50,000 attendees. Now it looks like the Penny Arcade team along with its convention partner Reed Exhibitions are starting to think about taking the PAX show over the Atlantic to Great Britain.

The online survey, intended for UK users, asks people if they would attend a version of PAX were to come to that country, along with choices of specific locations and what kind of events would be important in any UK version of PAX. This survey comes less than a month before the second annual PAX East event occures on March 11-13.

[Via VG247.com]

After a successful PAX Prime earlier this month in Seattle, attention now turns to PAX East 2011 in Boston. The second annual east coast version of the hugely popular Penny Arcade Expo launched its online registration for tickets today (although official hotel reservations and room discounts won't be available for another week).

The show itself will be held on March 11-13, 2011 which is just a week after this year's Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco ends (it will be held February 28-March 4). This year's inaugural PAX East sold out a week before the show opened its doors and brought in a solid 52,290 attendees. The 2011 edition will be held in the much larger Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and while that means more tickets will be available it's still a good idea to get your tickets as soon as possible if you are sure you are going.

PAX Prime 2010 was expected to be the largest event in the history of the Penny Arcade Expo and today Big Download can exclusively reveal that the seventh annual fan-themed game event in Seattle, Washington brought in a total of 67,600 attendees last weekend. The numbers were revealed to us by Penny Arcade's business head Robert Khoo.

The number is well over last year's attendance figure of 60,750 thanks in part to Penny Arcade's decision to expand the show's exhibit hall area at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center and move the main theater presentations off site to a nearby location. Even with the higher numbers tickets for PAX Prime 2010 sold out several days before it was held.

The show remains the single biggest US-based consumer show devoted to PC and console games. Of course the next PAX show is PAX East 2011 to be held in Boston, Massachusetts but exact dates for that event have yet to be revealed.

Check after the jump to read some more comments on PAX Prime 2010 from Khoo:

The game that has been in development for over 13 years may finally be released after all. Via a fan's blog site, publisher 2K Games is displaying at its PAX Prime 2010 booth signs and banners confirming that the development team at Gearbox Software will take over the making of Duke Nukem Forever, the first person shooter that began life at Duke Nukem's owner 3D Realms. We are still waiting for the promised video stream presentation from PAX Prime to go live.

The game began its life in 1997 as a sequel to 3D Realms' hit 1996 shooter Duke Nukem 3D. However the dev team dissapointed gamers year after year with delays, engine changes and then almost total silence on the game's development. In May 2009, 3D Realms laid off its internal development team and engaged in a legal battle with Duke Nukem Forever's publisher Take Two Interactive. Those legal actions were settled quietly a few months ago. We will post updates when we learn more official news on Duke Nukem Forever's re-announcement.

Update: The Wall Street Journal has posted up a story that also confirms Gearbox's involvement in Duke Nukem Forever's revival with Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford saying the team started working on the game in late 2009. The article seems confused about the game's release date; one paragraph says it will ship "next year" while another says it will be released in 2010.

Update 2: Pitchford has now confirmed via 2K Games' streaming video coverage that the game is in fact due out in 2011. Attendees at PAX Prime are getting a chance to play a portion of the game's single player content.

[Via Shacknews]

So are you ready to hear about something BIG? Then you will have to wait until Friday at 1 pm Eastern time. That's when 2K Games is supposedly revealing something BIG at its booth at PAX Prime 2010. It's apparently so BIG that the publisher is streaming live video from the event so everyone can know what it is about.

What could it be? Some people are speculating that it could be the rumored revival of the long awaited first person shooter Duke Nuke Forever via developer Gearbox Software. In related news, George Broussard, the present of Duke Nukem's owner 3D Realms, has "tweeted" a link to an interesting illustration. What does it really mean?

With PAX Prime 2010 now completely sold out of tickets, publishers that are attending the annual event in Seattle this weekend are announcing their special fan events. Capcom has something unusual it has planned its PAX Prime fan event designed to promote the upcoming zombie action game Dead Rising 2.

As you can see from the image, Capcom is promoting a special "sale" at Green's Hardware on Friday, September 3 at a location a few blocks away from PAX Prime's convention center. PAX Prime attendees have to head to the Capcom booth to get their invites which come in the form of Green's Hardware newspaper ad flyers. We suspect there will be some playable builds of Dead Rising 2 at the event but what else is going on. Will you really be able to get good deals on a box of nails or even a handgun? Stay tuned.

It looks like the crappy economy isn't keeping people from wanting to attend Seattle's Penny Arcade Expo. The annual gathering of gamers is being held this year on September 3-5 but if you have been wanting to get tickets for all three days your only option now is to purchase one-day tickets for each day.

Yep, that means that the three day tickets, priced at $55, are all sold out, according to the registration page on the official PAX web site. There are still one day tickets for all three days available but they cost $35 each. Still if history is any indication even the one day tickets will be sold out before the event actually begins. So if you have any plans at all of attending PAX this year you might want to hustle and buy your way in now.

[Via Joystiq]