17-07-2007 // E3 2007
This year marked the first year of the world's biggest games convention, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as its new incarnation, the E3 Media & Business Summit. The Commodore Gaming Team crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be there and prepare the entry of our gaming PCs, on this traditionally software-driven event.
The E3 Media & Business Summit took place in Santa Monica. The scale was smaller and much more personal than in recent years, with attendance possible by invitation only. Gone are the days of endless queues, sweaty goodie grabbers and all out media madness. With a magnificent, but tantalizing (work before pleasure and all that) view of the beach and the Santa Monica Pier, Commodore Gaming set up shop in the Hotel Casa del Mar and scheduled sitdowns with invited journalists. After finally getting our systems through customs, that is.
We received positive reactions from the U.S. press, once more proving that whoever comes within touching distance of the Commodore gaming PCs can't help but feel impressed. This culminated at the Games for Windows event by Microsoft, where we exhibited our babies complete with Shadowrun and Halo 2 C-kin panels, netting us a a public kudos-filled shout out from then still Xbox 360 and Games for Windows head honcho Peter Moore.
And since we were in the U.S., and it is the year in which the Commodore 64 has reached the age of 25 and the PET the age of 30, it was only right to invite the original pioneers of Commodore over for a modest celebration. We received friendly and positive responses to our reaching out, but in the end it was the trio of Bil Herd, lead engineer behind the Plus-4 and the Commodore 128, Terry Ryan, creator of the C-Basic 4 program language and Dave Warhol, music composer of many a classic C64 game title, that could make the trip out to Santa Monica. Other invitees that managed to come down were Robert Bernardo and members of his Fresno Commodore User Group and Jeri Ellsworth, of CDTV fame.
With 8bit Weapon's Seth Sternberger providing the soundtrack for the evening, it made for a pleasant and intimate event in Santa Monica's Monsoon Cafe. Robert Bernardo and his people were of great help, bringing down the quintessential C64s and one of the first PET editions, so visitors of the party could play around with them, many oldtime stories were shared by Bil Herd, and of course an overjoyed Bala Keilman gave one of his trademark speeches.
Bil Herd said: "If I look at the Commodore Logo, I see it as if it was stained with our blood. That might sound morbid, but it's just meant to clarify how much of ourselves we put into the company." It served as a reminder that we, as Commodore Gaming, have just begun to add our blood to the logo.
- Learn more about E3
- Commodore Gaming at E3 coverage by FiringSquad
- Commodore Gaming at E3 coverage by PreGameLobby