E3 to be scaled down or cut?

(UPDATE, 11:57 a.m. PDT Monday: Since this item was posted Sunday, confirmation has come from the Entertainment Software Association that the E3 trade show will be smaller in 2007. To see more details, click here.)

What follows is our original item, from 2:31 p.m. PDT Sunday:

Thanks to a great tip from our good friends over at Hustler of Culture, we are able to bring word of strange happenings in the video game industry.

According to GameSpot (which is owned by CNET Networks, CNET News.com's parent), E3, the video game industry's famously gargantuan annual trade show is likely to be deeply scaled back in 2007. Other published reports suggest the Los Angeles blowout may even be cancelled.

"On July 28, the Web site of UK trade magazine MCV reported discussions had taken place between the ESA and E3 exhibitors which addressed the future of the annual trade show," GameSpot's Curt Feldman reported Sunday. "GameSpot spoke with informed game industry sources late Friday and Saturday and learned that the show would radically shrink in size and move from its usual Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) venue to a smaller location."

The article stated that sources hinted the revamped E3 would invite just hundreds to attend, instead of the usual tens of thousands, and just as shockingly, that game companies would have meeting rooms to show off their wares rather than the usual small-city-size "booths" blasting concert-volume sounds for which E3 is best-known.

"One reason behind the downsizing of the show can be attributed to the dollar cost of the event to exhibitors," GameSpot wrote, "including the demands on companies to assign large numbers of staff to focus on the show, expenses associated with travel to the show, and the added expense to polish game builds and demos to be shown to attendees."

That makes sense in some ways, especially since there will be no more next-generation consoles to announce for 2007, as there have been the last two years with Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Wii, nee "\Revolution.

Meanwhile, Next Generation reporter Colin Campbell wrote Sunday that E3, in its present form, will be "cancelled for next year and the foreseeable future."

No word yet on how the thousands of E3-goers who seem to show up each year to ogle the dozens upon dozens of so-called "booth babes"--scantily-clad women hired by exhibitors to lure in men--will respond to the news.