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A number of high-profile video game publishers will not be in attendance during this year's E3 Media and Business Summit (formerly the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3). Among the skippers will be Activision, North America's largest game publisher, and Vivendi, both of whom will be dropping out of the Entertainment Software Association altogether. Other non-attendees include City of Heroes publisher NCSoft, Her Interactive and id Software, though those companies will remain with the ESA.
Some of the reasons speculated as to why companies are dropping out are - dissatisfaction with current ESA president Mike Gallagher, whom some have felt has not been active enough in defending or learning about the industry.
- the July date, which is very inconvenient for a number of big publishers. Some companies have a fiscal quarter end in June, after which they must observe a "quiet period" and not interact with investors.
- the feeling that the scaled down E3, to which only members and media are invited, does not serve the needs of the publishers, nor does spending a lot of money for promotion at an event like E3.
There is also concern that the scaled down E3 will make less money for the ESA, meaning that the association will have less money to lobby Congress or for things like the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
NCSoft has cited a timing issue related to their internal development schedule as their reason for not attending this year, but PR manager Mike Crouch has stated that the publisher still believes that E3 and the ESA are useful and NCSoft has nothing negative to say about either.
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