UPDATE: Actually, it's just the enforcement policy that is changing.

Our little trade show is growing up and adapting new rules to better show what a mature, well-behaved event it can be.  The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo will be a little different this year.  The first two hours of the first day of the show is only for authorized media (meaning no more paid-by-the-hour GameStop clerks roaming the floor just for fun and taking up a journalist's valuable time in line for the next big thing) and, as Portico points out, there's now a more dignified dress code in place for the "booth babes".

"Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the Show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the Show. ESA, in its sole discretion, will determine whether material is acceptable."

Let me just say this: I love to see a beautiful woman in flimsy clothing as much as the next guy, but the use of and attention paid to the models at E3 is just downright disrespectful to everyone involved.  The idea is for the companies displaying material at E3 to hire models to strut and vamp around the products, thereby attracting the attention of the stereotypically undersexed geeks roaming the floor who will in turn pay extra attention to the games on display.  However, the models overshadow the reason we're all supposed to be at E3 in the first place: the games.  How many websites and magazines feature a photolog of "the babes of E3" each year?  AMN does it, for one.  We shouldn't be there to critique the women.  We should be there to critique the games.  And don't even get me started on what the use of booth babes in the first place says about the industry's views of women in general...