Preview: E3 Expo 2010

We're all ready to roll - we're still very busy, but things are looking great. The show floor is as exciting and vibrant as ever, and while there have been a couple of years of restraint in terms of booth design, last year we returned to having more freedom to design the look-and-feel from the bottom up.

So I think we'll have some exciting displays going on, and when you're driving down into Los Angeles I think you'll know that the videogames industry is in town - we're just taking over the place.

International retail attendance is up over past years, with close to 200 buyers coming from 74 countries - and that number's probably going to grow still. International media attendance is up as well, with about 1000 foreign journalists coming to the Expo, which is about a 30 per cent increase, and says a lot about the show and the industry itself.

If you look at those numbers, everything's pointing to a very strong show.

I'm very optimistic, based on the innovations you see and some exciting titles you hear rumoured - everything from developments on motion technology with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 joining the Wii in that respect to new, great titles.

When it comes to the industry's downturn, there are a couple of other factors that need to be remembered as well - it's a reflection of our own great success just prior to that, with the business showing incredible economic growth. There's going to be a bit of levelling off from time-to-time, and we're experiencing a bit of that, even though last December was the largest Dollar-revenue month in the industry.

The other thing is that there's so much activity that's not really being counted right now - digital download transactions, and so on, and all of that is making more money than ever. But I do think we're at the point now where we're going to see another exciting boost for the industry, both in terms of the entertainment that's being produced and in the consumer appetite for that entertainment. I think it's all going to match up and tell a very good story for the coming year.

Right now we're seeing, in a general sense, a greater appreciation of the industry than at any time in our history. I was recently up in Boston where they had a games and health conference, with panels talking about great, positive ways that games are being used in everything from exercise and senior care to psychotherapy.

We're seeing the White House embracing computer and videogames as part of what they call their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) push. Videogames are a key component in that, and a competition just ended which used LittleBigPlanet in that - and there's more to come.

So those are great indicators - you're seeing games applied to health, education, rehabilitation, so folks are finally starting to understand the industry more than when it first emerged as a prominent entertainment form.

That said, there are critics out there, and those who don't have a full understanding - so part of our challenge as the ESA is to tell that story.