penny-arcade-expo posts

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.

As we exclusively reported earlier today, the seventh edition of PAX Prime 2010 brought in 67,600 attendees to Seattle last weekend, making the fan-oriented games convention the largest of its type in the US. The first annual PAX East event last March in Boston brought in 52,290 attendees and next year will move to a much larger venue in the same city.

With two successful Penny Arcade Expos, is there room for a third PAX event? Gamasutra reports that the answer is, "Maybe." During a press Q&A with Penny Arcade co-creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins during PAX Prime 2010, the report says the team hinted that a third PAX event might happen and that it "would likely take place in a different country; preferably somewhere the duo want to visit." Might we suggest Bermuda?

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:

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?

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.

We've seen some minor game crossovers in the past but apparently something is coming from Telltale Games that, well, could be (and we emphasize COULD) one of the biggest game crossover events ever. GameTrailers has posted up a teaser trailer that, as you can see from the screenshot, seems to show the silhouettes of Tycho from Penny Arcade, Max of Sam and Max, Strong Bad from Homestar Runner and the Heavy player character from Team Fortress 2.

So what in the wild, wild world of sports is this teasing us for? Is it for an upcoming game? Is it for a comic strip? Is it for an animation project? We have no idea but from the teaser video it looks like more info is coming on Thursday, September 2. Color us confused, intrigued and excited. You can check out the embedded trailer after the jump:

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.

We have been waiting for a long time for developer Red 5 Studios to reveal concrete details on its first game and it looks like that wait is finally over. We noticed that the company was an exhibitor at PAX Prime 2010 in Seattle in early September. Late on Thursday Big Download got confirmation from both Red 5 Studios and a PR firm that is representing them that the studio will indeed debut its first game at PAX. The PR rep specifically stated the game would be an "team-based action shooter" title.

Formed in 2005 by former members of Blizzard's World of Warcraft team Red 5 has managed to stay silent about their title although we do know it is using a modified version of the Offset Engine. The company ran into some financial issues in early 2010 that included some layoffs but Red 5 later got a majority of its holdings bought by China-based publisher The9 for $20 million.

The keynote speaker for PAX Prime 2010 (that's the one in Seattle for those of you keeping score at home) has now been announced via a "tweet" from the official PAX Twitter page. It will be handled by none other than Warren Spector who has a huge list of memorable PC games he's been in charge of (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex and more). Of course he's now working at Junction Point Studios for Epic Mickey for the Wii but perhaps he will use this keynote speech to announce his return to PC gaming . . . right Warren?

By the way, this year's PAX Prime, to be held in Seattle on September 3-5, will be a little different in that the main stage for the keynote and other events at the show will actually be off-site from PAX's home base, the Washington State Trade and Convention Center. According to a post on the PAX message boards, the big theater events will be held at the Benaroya Hall which is about a five minute walk from the convention center. The upside to this is that this will free up space to expand PAX's exhibit hall. Oh, and if you want to go to PAX this year you had better hustle as tickets for the show are going fast . . .

With the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle now the biggest game oriented show in the US in terms of attendance you can imagine that there is a lot of interest by game developers to show their titles on the exhibit floor. For the past few years PAX organizers have been running the PAX 10 competition where they pick 10 current and upcoming indie games and give them exhibit space at PAX 2010.

The PAX web site has posted up the winners of this year's PAX 10 and not suprisingly most are either coming out for the PC or are PC exclusive titles. They range from arcade titles to historical strategy game to platformers. The PC titles are listed below and will be on display at PAX 2010 on September 3-5.

Super Meat Boy - Team Meat
Altitude - Nimby Games
Bastion - SuperGiant Games
Fowl Space - Pixelante
Hegemony: Philip of Macedon - Longbow Games
Plane Weaver - Team Plane Weaver
Puzzle Bots - Wadjet Eye Games
Solace - One Man Down