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“Gamers Day” is dead, long live the CAPTIVATE08 Me

Mar 28, 2008 // Kramez

Officially, we have killed our Gamers Day event. Dead, like doornail. We’ve moved instead to a new media summit format, which we’re calling CAPTIVATE08, and holding in Las Vegas at the end of May. You might not really care, but there’s a bunch of information about the event after the jump, hints towards what’s coming/being shown, vaguely ramblings on the next phase of Capcom Unity and the tantalizingly-dangled news that members of our community are going to have the opportunity to attend our media summit. Got some time to kill? Follow the link to more words!

Good news: we’re actually going to be inviting a few members of the community to attend CAPTIVATE08. Bad news: the guest list (for both community AND media) is going to be tight. With the sheer amount of games websites out there (you would not believe how many email product requests we get in PR on a daily basis; we‒ve sent out over 400 copies of DMC4 since January!), there’s just no way to get every media outlet in to see us at CAPTIVATE08. In fact, pretty much everyone from the media side who will be attending has been invited at this point (US only; European media will receive invites in a week or two).

Do not despair if you’re part of the media have not been invited, however. There will be many, many opportunities to catch up with Capcom this year. There will be this year’s E3, of course ( cue farting noise ), Comic-con in San Diego, CES in Vegas in January, quarterly press tours to New York, LA and (constantly) throughout the Bay Area, as well as some international events (Games Convention in Germany, TGS). Heck, we may even put on a few more smaller events like Digital Day. Whew, I need to hire more people in PR.

But most of you looking at this are not in the media, and don’t care. When will you see more about some of the biggest games coming in the next year — Dark Void, Bionic Commando, Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5 — as well as learn about a pocketful of new games? A smidgen of information will trickle out before the event, but the main explosion of information, announcements, interviews, screen shots, trailers, videos and wide-scale Capcom-themed insanity will begin hitting the web at the very beginning of June. As usual, you‒ll be able to catch the information about it in just about every magazine, website, blog and TV show that covers games, as well as getting all the goods here on Unity through our blog, YouTube channel, Flickr account, etc.

I've got a goooooolden ticket!For those of you involved in our community who might be interested in crashing CAPTIVATE08 and seeing the games industry – or at least the Capcom version of it — up close and personal (plus having the chance to have Seth K clean your clock on Street Fighter IV), watch this space for coming details. Capcom Unity is going to be inviting five members of Unity to come out to Vegas, see and play some of our new games waaaaaay in advance, meet some of your favorite developers and media types (you’ll finally have your chance to tell someone from Kotaku, G4 or Game Informer exactly what you think) and, let’s be honest, party with Capcom. In the next month, we’ll be letting Unity members know how they can score the proverbial golden ticket to the event. I don’t want to steal all of Chris (Lost) and Seth’s thunder, so I‒ll let them post the official word once we’ve got it all hammered out.

Why are we inviting the public to attend what is usually regarded as a media event? Because we’re serious about our commitment to you guys right here. While media exposure will always be the fastest way for our company to reach a wide swath of people, Capcom also wants to talk to and involve YOU directly. This should be obvious from the way we have totally evolved our communication process and stepped up our community outreach over the last year. Letting you guys vote on costumes for We Love Golf!, debuting Street Fighter IV characters and trailers on Unity first, providing constant updates on the forums and blogs and Christian’s near-total corporate transparency are all part and parcel of our dedication to speaking first and foremost directly to our fans.

This company has made significant investments into the nebulously-labeled “community†budgetary bucket over the last two years, and we‒re on the verge of revealing our next, massive stage of how we interact with you, you interact with us and we all interact together. That sounds weirder and somehow dirtier than it really is, btw. Seth, Lost, Christian, Tom James and I are all very, very, very excited about the next phase of Unity that we‒ll be rolling out to you in busted-Beta form in the next four weeks; we‒re currently poking at the Phase 1 Alpha and our minds have already been blown. I promise you: you‒re going to love it.

Wow, did I get off-topic. To sum up: CAPTIVATE08 Media Summit, coming end of May; all of our news hitting beginning of June. You probably won‒t be there, but you will be able to experience it here.