Thanks to the ESA for tossing a little holiday joy to the game journalism community by announcing that next year's Electronic Entertainment Expo... er, check that, I mean next year's E3 Media and Business Summit... will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center as in days gone by instead of a handful of hotels and an airplane hanger in Santa Monica.

The Entertainment Software Association today announced that the E3 Media & Business Summit will be returning to the spacious digs of the Los Angeles Convention Center for next year's event which will run from July 15 through July 17. But that doesn't mean that the new E3 is returning to its old ways.

'We are very much not going back to the old E3," Rich Taylor, senior vice president of communications and research for the ESA, told me in an interview. "I think we are all on the same page for the industry on what we want those days in July to be about."

"This is the new E3, new and improved."

Thank goodness it's back at the LACC next year.  As much as I've come to like the new E3 format, schlepping from hotel to hotel to hanger to hotel was a bit of a grind.  It sounds like there won't be any kind of show floor at all for next year which does make me wonder what I'll do with my short bursts of downtime.  I know this year I found myself with an hour or two to kill between appointments sometimes which was a perfect opportunity to go to the hanger and see the sights, play the games, and snap photos.  The real E3 question, however, goes unanswered: will Electronic Arts provide a live monkey again next year?