PAX Tops Last Year With 67,600 Attendees

PAX Prime 2010 was the Penny Arcade Expo's best-attended event ever, playing host to 67,600 attendees. Its founders, webcomic creators and game critics Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, said passes sold out faster than ever this year, and that theoretically, PAX could be limited only by the size of its physical venues. The precise figure comes from Penny Arcade's business head, Robert Khoo, speaking to website BigDownload. According to the report, the event was able to accommodate more attendees thanks in part to organizers' decision to expand the exhibition area. Organizers also moved main theater presentations from inside the Washington State Trade and Convention Center to near to the main event site. Last year's PAX hosted 60,750 attendees. Main theater exhibitions were hosted in Benayora Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. "We always joked about taking over Seattle, but it’s seriously happening," Holkins had said in a Gamasutra-attended press Q&A session. "We [now] take up five blocks." This allowed room for more exhibits; this year, the event played host to the high-profile surprise reveal of long, long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever from Gearbox, as well as the quiet, unassuming debut of a new game from Braid creator Jon Blow.