penny-arcade-expo posts

Tickets for the 2011 edition of PAX Prime went on sale less that a couple of weeks ago. But if the game show's Twitter page is to be believed, the three-day tickets for the Seattle-based event could sell out months before the show begins on August 26.

The Twitter post states, "I don't want to alarm anyone, but based on current sales trends, we're going to sell out of PAX Prime 3-day badges in about ... 15 days." Of course even if that happens you can still purchase one day tickets for each day of PAX Prime 2011 but we suspect those will all be spoken for long before the show begins.

It looks like the team behind the Penny Arcade Expo will indeed be launching a third event this year but this one will be a little different. It's called PAX Dev and it will be strickly for game developers for the purpose of "elevating the art and creating place to share, debate and learn." Not even the press will be able to attend this event.

The show, which is aiming for a low 750-ish attendance number, will be held on August 24 and 25 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, just before the massive PAX Prime 2011 event is held in the same city. If you want to go and are a real game developer you can do so for $249 for both days or $129 if you are a student taking game development courses.

PAX East 2011 is now in the history books and the second annual east coast event in the Penny Arcade Expo consumer video-PC game show line up is now even bigger than the PAX Prime event in Seattle. Penny Arcade's head biz guy Robert Khoo has revealed to Big Download that this week's PAX East 2011 show in Boston brought in a whopping 69,500 attendees. By comparison, the first PAX East event in 2010 (held in a smaller convention center than this year's event) brought in 52,290 attendees.

Khoo told us via email, "The venue we have this year is massive - it's legitimately 2-3x larger than last year's venue, so the amount of breathing room was fantastic. I didn't hear a single complaint about overcrowding. I never thought I would see the day." 2010's PAX Prime show in Seattle, the highest attended yet, brought in 67,600 attendees. The 2011 edition of PAX Prime will be held on August 26-28 and Khoo told us that 2012's PAX East event will be held on April 6-8.

And what about the rumors of a PAX event overseas, perhaps in London? Khoo told us, "Haha, no sorry - there really isn't anything to say! we look at all sorts of places to see if it's right for PAX. I think the UK rumors got picked up because it's just so... Out there."

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.

PAX East 2011 is less than a week away but opportunity to attend at least one day of the March 11-13 gaming event in Boston are slipping away. According to a post today on the official PAX Twitter page, " ... we only have about 250 Sunday badges left!". Those tickets are expected to sell out before the start of PAX East on Friday.

Meanwhile game publishers and developers are starting to annouce their PAX East exhibit plans:

• Irrational Games will be holding an invite only party on March 12.
• ArenaNet will show off a playable version of Guild Wars 2 at PAX East.
• FireFall will be shown off for the first time in playable form at PAX East.
• Nvidia is rumored to launch its new dual GPU graphics card the GeForce GTX 590 at PAX East.

With just under 18 days to go, PAX East 2011 preparations are starting to accelerate. The event's official web site has now confirmed that all three day tickets for the March 11-13 event in Boston are sold out, as are all Saturday tickets. There are still some left for Friday and Sunday but they are expected to go quickly.

The show's expo map has also been uploaded to the PAX East web site and it reveals lots of exhibitors that until now have not been announced. Bethesda Softworks will be at the show, as well as Electronic Arts, Kalypso Media, Microsoft, Valve and many more. The show is expected to have attendance that will be much higher than last year's inaugural PAX East event.

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]

With about five weeks to go before the second annual PAX East event starts up in Boston, the event's web site has updated its exhibitor list with a number of new companies pledging to attend the second biggest game event in the US (the biggest being, of course, PAX Prime in Seattle). Among the new exhibitors are THQ, Alienware, Logitech and others.

Meanwhile if you were planning to attend the March 11-13 event, you might want to hurry up and buy your tickets soon. According to an official PAX "tweet", "Based on current trends, we should sell out of our 3-day badge allocation in about 16 days. Heads up has been given! ." Indeed it has, PAX 'tweet"; indeed it has.

In less than two months the second annual PAX East game event will be held in Boston. A few days ago the event's current web site revealed the preliminary list of exhibitors that are scheduled to attend PAX East on March 11-13. At the moment there's only a couple of major publishers attending the show (2K Games and Ubisoft) along with PC hardware companies like Intel and Nvidia.

There are also a number of smaller game publishers attending this year along with indie game developers behind games like Skulls of the Shogun. PAX East had over 50,000 people attend its inaugural event in 2010 and that number is expected to increase for 2011 thanks in part to the show moving to a larger venue, the Boston Convention Center.

The Child's Play 2010 fund raising drive isn't quite over yet but the game industry-support charity that helps children's hospitals around the world has already exceeded 2009's $1.7 million amount. The charity's official web site has announced that it has raised $1,853,894.59 in donations.

The official fund raising drive is still ongoing which means that the final total will actually be higher than this week's already impressive amount. For example the Humble Indie Bundle, which is scheduled to end on Christmas Day, is giving part of its donations to Child's Play. The final donation numbers for Child's Play 2010 should be reveal in early January.