PAX Teams with Reed for PAX East Coast 2010

PAX East Coast Scheduled for 2010 CREDIT: View full size image

Penny Arcade, the organizers of the Penny Arcade Expo (otherwise known as "PAX") announced Saturday a partnership with exhibition giant Reed Exhibition to stage a "PAX East Coast" in 2010.

The yearly three-day game festival for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers has taken place annually in Seattle, Washington since 2004, and reportedly drew 37,000 attendees in 2007. This year's PAX is scheduled for August 29th trough the 31st.

The fesitival, which includes exhibits by gaming giants like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, gaming tournaments, and even concerts, is positioned as a more consumer/gamer-friendly alternative to the gaming trade exhibition E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), and bills itself as, "everything E3 isn't."

"We made it the opposite on purpose," reads Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry Holkins' Friday announcement on their website . "Public instead of private, fun instead of work. It's about gamers, instead of games. This is all pretty obvious in retrospect, but for some reason no-one else had done it. It deserves to be on the East Coast. Frankly, it should be global. I'm working on it."

In the announcement, Holkins explained PAX could not organize two shows in one year by themselves, and will partner with Reed Exhibitions, organizer of the annual New York Comic-Con (among hundreds of other global exhibitions) to help "share the load".

According to the announcement, while PAX is now a partnership with Reed, its founders will continue to guide the show 'editorially', with Reed apparently contributing logistical, organizational, and funding support.

"We still run the show, determine all the panels, choose where it takes place, select the bands, pretty much everything," reads Holkins' announcement. "We are its conscience. So, that's what's going on. An East Coast show is only the beginning."