Once upon a time, E3 was a huge, extravagant spectacle. Tens of thousands of raving video game fans, young and old, descended on the show each and every year to sample the best of what game publishers, big and small, had to offer.

Well, that's over now, as the show is closed to the public. Only journalists and other media types, like analyst savant Michael Pachter, are allowed through E3's golden gates. The result of that decision, by E3 handler ESA, has been less than successful, to put things nicely.

Some mega publishers, like Nintendo, have distanced themselves so much from E3 these days that they've changed their entire strategy for the show. Instead of a new Mario, for example, attendees got Shigeru Miyamoto bandying about on stage playing a virtual MIDI instrument in . Reports of gaming journalist suicides after the Nintendo keynote were grossly exaggerated, however.

But that could change, if a rumor from Monday pans out in the coming weeks.

According to "sources" at , G4 and Newsweek, which we're taking with our usual megaton-sized grain of salt, ESA is hoping to expand E3 to a much wider audience. The crowds won't approach the 60,000-strong surge of E3's past, but it won't be the quiet tomb it was this summer, either.