Dust settles on publisher E3 attendance confusion

We thought we'd leave this last night as some of the details involved seemed less than solid.

The confusion focused mainly on a Kotaku story that claimed six publishers were to quit E3. The story's been edited since publication - as you can see from the original URL - with the headline now reading "Five Publishers Drop Out of E3 This Year, Some Blame ESA President".

The six publishers in question were Activision and Vivendi (both confirmed as quitting both the show and ESA), Codemasters, Foundation 9, NCsoft and id Software. After Kotaku published the story, ESA contacted the site to say Codemasters would be attending the show, and a note was added at the bottom of the original piece.

The story took another hit when id PR contacted Gamespot to say that it too would be attending E3, but then later contacted the site to retract its statement and promise a further update. As you can see, the Gamespot piece carries three updates at the bottom. The Kotaku story still claims id won't be there.

The other aspect to Kotaku's story centred on Mike Gallagher's ESA leadership, but we wouldn't go near it with a bargepole, frankly.

Foundation 9 and NCsoft have now both issued statements to Gamespot confirming they won't be attending this year's show.

An NCsoft spokesperson said, "The timing wasn't right for our products, so it really doesn't make sense for us to go."

The Foundation 9 comment said, ""Our decision not to exhibit at E3 this year, was in no way in response to Activision’s decision.

"We came to the decision on our own at the end of 2007. Some of our business development folks may actually go to the show as attendees, we're just not investing in the exhibit space. In addition, we just want to be clear that we have nothing against the show or the ESA in any way; exhibiting at E3 is just not something that fits with our marketing strategy this year."

The firm make a similar confirmation of non-attendance to Joystiq.

In summary: Activision, Vivendi, NCsoft and Foundation 9 definitely aren't going to be at E3 this year. Codemasters is going. Atlus isn't. Not sure what's happening with id.

There's a list of companies listed on the official site so far - which at the moment is password-protected - here.