Post show ramblings after the Game Developers Conference...

All in all i think it was a really good show this year.  I met with lots of interesting people doing lots of interesting projects.  I also heard ramblings that the show next year might be in San Francisco rather than San Jose.  It was awfully crowded, so maybe a change of venue might be in order, but really i don't know if it's going to happen or not..

The expo itself was decently sized this year with lots of good booths.  Renderware had a large booth once again, but it seemed a little more enclosed this time, so i didn't actually go in there.  Nokia's N-Gage booth (which was huge and popular last year) was smaller and much less popular this year..  Part of that probably has to do with it's sub-prime location this year compared to last year, part, but not all..  ATI and nVidia's booths both had interesting presentations happening throughout the day, and the AMD64 booth was quite popular as well.  The Intel booth was huge as always, and they once again had the 'contests' where 6 people would play an online game for 5 minutes, and the winner would get the game (this year the game was 'Call of Duty')..  I played once and came in third place (i sucked), but did get a stuffed intel bunny-man doll.

My talk seemed to be received very well too.  I covered most of the basic areas for managed code in gaming, showed some demos, failed in showing other demos (doh!), and got some good questions..  One demo in particular really stood out for the crowd and i was asked many questions on that one after the talk and throughout the show.  It'll be released in an upcoming DirectX SDK Update..

I loved the award shows Wednesday night, we announced XNA, and i think it was an all around great show.