Representing the gaming press, we have Susan Arendt of Wired's News Blogging team at Game | Life, N'Gai Croal, General Editor of Newsweek and John Davison of the Ziff Davis Game Group's 1UP Network. From the developer and technology services side, we have Todd Northcutt, Director of IGN / GameSpy Multiplayer Technology and Denny Thorley, President of Day 1 Studios.

This year's E3, spread out over several hotel suites and the Barker Hanger at Santa Monica was an effort by the event's organizers to offer a more viable environment for exhibitors to present their products and to conduct business.

Susan Arendt of Wired commented initially on the changes in the podcast: "E3, to me this year, felt more like it was being done out of habit than anything else. There weren't any big surprises, really. Just about every game that we saw we knew was coming had already seen at a game day event. With rare exception, we pretty much had already heard everything everyone had to say. It just felt like we were all kind of there because we all get together for E3 every year."

The panelists discuss how access to materials was affected by both the invitation-only attendance as well as the physical layout of the expo, spread out as it was between multiple locations.

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal added of these issues: "Obviously there was no Kentia Hall, so there goes a lot of the obscure, the Korean, the sort of the variety of stuff that you would see over in Kentia Hall. That was deliberate on the part of the ESA. In previous years they had allowed a range of smaller publishers to draft on their coattails as they saw it, and this year they decided not to do that... For me, coming from Newsweek I tend to have to cover some of the bigger games with a mix of smaller games, and I am personally more interested in indie games than I've been in the past, and again, because I couldn't get over to Barker Hanger I couldn't see those."

Their reports weren't all critical. Particularly from the developer side, the panelists go into some specifics about how well the format worked for them in terms of doing business. And on the press side, the journalists appreciated the quality of access they got unfettered access they got directly with the developers themselves.

The panelists wrap up their commentary by speculating on how the ESA could address some of the perceived deficiencies of this year's format, and some of the challenges they might have to face to do so.

Newsweek's Croal particulary noted: "I go to a news conference for news, and little news was being made... You have all these companies, these video game publishers that are based in the United States, yet Sony and their third parties just announced a whole slew of new games in Japan [immediately following E3] and it's not even Tokyo Game Show. What does that say when those games could have been announced at E3?"

He concluded: "I know the Japanese market needs a boost as far as the PS3 is concerned, but what does that say about North America's position in the global game market - when Sony can just have its own event not even a full week after E3 and unveil a slate of new games from itself and third parties, and it’s not even TGS?"

You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: 'Does The New E3 Work?' (.MP3).

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For our July 6, 2007 show, we feature an interview with Manifesto Games now open for a couple years, we check in with Greg Costikyan to see how the independent digital distribution service has fared. In the years since the service has opened its doors, the gaming landscape has changed perceptibly, though even with many more distribution channels emerging on both the PC and consoles and a broadening of the market, Manifesto Games still offers titles that appeal to particular interest groups that conventional games don't.

Despite the varied offerings of casual games portals such as Pogo, online distribution services such as Steam, and classic games and new content services such as GameTap, Costikyan says that he does not feel that the marketplace is crowded. Rather, he feels that games are now common cultural currency, perhaps to the degree where people can be convinced to check out games in subjects that appeal to them, whether they are self-identified "gamers," or not, and says success is really a matter of identifying the right markets for the titles that each service offers.

Costikyan explains that one of the most significant challenges for the indie space is to convince the public that games produced by independent, smaller teams don't equate to poor quality, but instead says that individual creators can work with a more singular vision to craft worthwhile experiences. The games that have done best for Manifesto, such as Impact Games' PeaceMaker and Wadjet Eye's The Shivah, says Costikyan, distinguish themselves by being particularly innovative in theme and topic or game play.

In the course of the interview, Costikyan addresses Manifesto Games' plans to appeal to community building to foster a relationship with the audiences who are most interested in the kinds of games Manifesto offers. He talks about his general impressions about the indie games scene, and the emergence of digital distribution services such as Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's PlayStation Network. And he shares what accomplishments he is most proud of, and what we might expect out of Manifesto in the future.

You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: Interview with Greg Costikyan (.MP3, 32 minutes, 15 MB).

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For today's show, we feature an extensive interview with Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter.

His unvarnished opinions and gutsy predictions have garnered him and his firm a high profile among the gaming community.

But, says Pachter in the course of the interview, "I don't solicit all this press coverage. The press finds me. I think that the press finds me because I'm colorful, I'm not shy, I have an opinion and I frankly really don't care if someone agrees or disagrees with it. I'm willing to share."

"The controversy - the invective - that I get comes primarily from the games industry people always writing me emails and asking me, 'what do you think about this?' You know, 'what do you think when one of your competitors said "something"' that I thought was stupid. I wrote back that the guy was naive. And boy, headline: 'Pachter calls other analyst naive.' Today someone asked me, 'what do you think about the Sega marketing guy saying the Wii is a fad,' and I responded. Boy, headline."

We talk about the method behind his madness, delving into some of the thinking and methodology behind his analysis. He talks about how his coverage of the entertainment sector, and games in particular, differs from other categories covered by sales side analysts. We discuss his thoughts on investor-friendly publishing and consumer desire, and why the two might not be mutually exclusive.

In true Pachter-ian fashion, he straightforwardly addresses his cult of personality among message boards and gaming communities.

"I publish my monthly console and handheld hardware numbers because the NeoGAF guys think it's so fun," says Pachter of the infamous messageboard. "But no one's ever asked to see my annual forecast for all those things. I'm spot on, for my annual forecast. I'd love to see those guys put out a contest for annual forecasts for the next five years and then we'll compare my numbers to theirs, because I've been spot on for five or six years now."

"The average NeoGAF visitor isn't equipped to actually prepare those things," says Pachter, "because it requires you to make an assumption about pricing, and I've been great on that as well. It's hard to do."

Pachter shares some of his biggest industry surprises of the past few years, and his personal pick for most under-rated company in the game industry:

"I love the innovation. I love the opportunistic rapid market response. I think this company's going to earn a lot more money than most people do."

And, finally, responds to earlier comments he's made that next-gen game prices are too low and that "consumers are getting a gift":

"I'm just making an economic argument, not so much a suggestion," says Pachter. "[Prices of next-gen games] aren't going up. You're seeing collectors editions at $70 -- you're seeing the GTA collector's at $90. Guitar Hero -- $90. People don't even blink. They stand in line for the thing."

"I just meant that the public is willing to spend more for the content that they want," he adds. "Again, adjusted for inflation, the old PSone game in 1995 that came out at $49.99 would be probably about 70 bucks right now, just at 3 percent inflation compounded for the last 12 years, you'd be up over $70. On an apples to apples basis, $60 is a bargain. And the content of a PS3 game is a lot greater, or an Xbox 360 game, than the content of the first generation PSone games."

You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: Interview with Michael Pachter (.MP3, 48 minutes, 22 MB).

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For today's show, we feature an interview with Kane Minkus, principal and founder of Somatone Interactive Audio.

Although you might not be familiar with Somatone, you are probably quite familiar with their work. Somatone scores and produces music, sound effects, and voice overs for over 120 titles a year, including some of your favorite console, casual and downloadable games, such as EA's Medal of Honor series, PlayFirst's Diner Dash series, 3-Rings' best of IGF winner, Bang Howdy, and PopCap's fiendishly addictive Peggle.

Not only does Somatone handle music composition, sound design, voice overs, and mixing and mastering, but they are also responsible for developing a highly optimized, high quality sound and music technology specifically tailored for downloadable games.

In the interview, Kane talks about his motivation for starting up Somatone, specifically with an eye, or ear, toward servicing the game industry. Kane explains how their movement into the downloadable casual space has been a great challenge to the sound designers and composers at Somatone in terms of the breadth of styles and the diversity of the audience for those games. Also, how Somatone's tight integration of technology for their clients allows them a more cooperative and creative role in working with the game development team.

He addresses some of the technical considerations in the development of their audio technology for downloadables, and how it shapes the feature set of their production tools. The end result being a highly optimized, very efficient and surprisingly flexible solution.

Kane also talks about some of the unique process that Somatone applies to score games, including their use of Laban Movement Analysis, a systematic means of describing and deconstructing motion. Finally, he talks about the musical inspiration behind the score for Peggle, which turns out to have the same controlled randomness as the game itself.

You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: Interview with Kane Minkus (.MP3, 36 minutes, 16 MB).

In addition, you can subscribe to the GDC Radio podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.