by Danreb VictorioEDITOR’S NOTE: Sony has announced new info regarding E3 Experience Registration.
5/31 Update — Some changes and updates on ticket and seat availability:
- Ticket registration will open today, Wednesday 5/31/17, at 1:30PM PT.
- There was a brief system test last night which allowed a small number of tickets to be claimed. As of this morning there are still plenty of tickets remaining at each theater.
- If you received a ticket confirmation email you are guaranteed a seat at the event if you present your valid ticket at least 30 minutes before show time.
- We will be admitting those without tickets on a first-come first-served basis after all present ticket holders are seated.
The original article follows.
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Sony has traditionally always held some of the biggest press conferences at E3, highlighting big moments and surprises for both PlayStation fans and the media in general.
A couple years ago, Sony introduced the opportunity for fans not fortunate enough to be at E3 to experience being at their large E3 presser with other fans by offering the “E3 Experience” in movie theatres nationwide.
The E3 Experience has been met with resounding success, but the registration experience has always left much to be desired.
Previously, Sony has used EventGrid to facilitate the event’s registration with mixed results. EventGrid’s servers were absolutely smashed by the traffic generated by thousands of interested PlayStation fans, and while some users were lucky enough to get through and confirm their tickets, plenty of users weren’t even able to get on waitlists.
This year, Sony elected to go with Gofobo to facilitate the registration process which started 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning, and the results were horrid.
First off, the link went up late, as people didn’t notice the “blue button” showing up on the PlayStation site until 10:03 a.m. yesterday.
When the site did go up, it was totally unresponsive. There were people that were hitting F5, refreshing for hours, seeing a variety of things they didn’t want to see. Whether it was a blank page, a server error page, or even a page saying the site was under maintenance… in 2016, people weren’t happy.
https://twitter.com/JurassicYeti/status/869613170889039872
https://twitter.com/OscarNotOskar1/status/869624822120271872
#gofobo #playstation #E3Experience pic.twitter.com/4V0ugs8cfL
— Aaron Janz (@BearsFan06010) May 30, 2017
To make matters worse, the PlayStation Twitter didn’t even say anything until 1:31 p.m., literally three hours after registration “opened.”
We're looking into issues users are having getting tickets to this year's E3 Experience. Stay tuned for updates.
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 30, 2017
Soon enough, Gofobo went back up, and codes started appearing on NeoGAF that allowed people to get through. When the site eventually was fixed, tickets appeared to have sold out, enraging the masses.
Sony had this to say just over nine hours after the problems started.
Still investigating E3 Experience ticketing issues. We’ve pulled the site for now & will have an update tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 31, 2017
Microsoft has a similar debacle a few weeks ago with their E3 FanFest registration. Plenty of people successfully registered, only for Microsoft to go back and retract those registrations and have them at another date, to which they were also server swamped. However, Microsoft had the decency to provide E3 passes to both the people that actually got in, as well as the people that successfully registered the first time and didn’t get in the second time.
Sony hasn’t provided an update since then. We’ve reached out, and so have plenty of other people, and it’s tough to say where Sony goes from here.