Get ready to fill your swag bag, because LA's largest video game expo is opening its doors to the public—sort of.
The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo—or E3—is spinning off a public-facing side show next door to the Downtown industry-only trade show. E3 Live will take over LA Live for three days in June with games, gadget demos, live entertainment and limited-edition merch. Free tickets are available in five-hour blocks on a first-come, first-served basis for June 14 through 16.
A ticket to E3 Live doesn't get gamers into the trade show next door at the LA Convention Center; E3 proper is still industry-only. While E3 Live may not feature the same big-budget sensory overload that you'll find inside the Convention Center, it does promise some of the same game demos from major publishers like Ubisoft and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, and hands-on hardware experiences from the likes of Alienware, Facebook/Oculus and HTC Vive. According to Ars Technica, the event also includes access to "Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions," an orchestral concert of the Nintendo series' soundtrack.
E3 Live won't be the only public video game event that week. Battlefield and Star Wars publisher EA is hosting its own fan event, EA Play, that'll take place at the Novo a few days prior to E3—which EA has decided to forgo this year. It joins the likes of publishers like Activision, Sega and Disney in vacating their costly show floor space. Given that, we don't think it's a stretch to assume that E3 Live is a means to build up hype in the face of declining publisher interest.
While this isn't the all-access experience we imagined when we first got word about E3 opening up to the public, it is still a chance for gamers to get their hands on pre-release titles and to wait in lines that we're sure will be just as punishing as the real thing.