PAX East 2010 bands announced

Penny Arcade let us know today who would be coming to the Boston-based Penny Arcade Expo East -- both on the exhibitors side and on the entertainment side.

Very quickly, here's the initial exhibitors list:

2K Games

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Penny Arcade let us know today who would be coming to the Boston-based Penny Arcade Expo East -- both on the exhibitors side and on the entertainment side.

Very quickly, here's the initial exhibitors list:

2K Games

Dell

EA

Harmonix

Microsoft

Nintendo

NVIDIA

Rockstar Games

Sega

The Behemoth

Turbine

Twisted Pixel Games

Ubisoft

Wizards of the Coast

Now lets talk about the bands. The concerts at PAX have always drawn a healthy-sized crowd, despite being only a few hours long and very much a sideshow attraction to the main show floor exhibits. Over the years, several acts have become fan favorites PAX-goers bank on seeing -- like Anamanaguchi and Jonathan Coulton.

Naturally, both those performances are booked for PAX East. Also returning are MC Frontalot and 2009-newcomers Metroid Metal and Paul and Storm. The new acts debuting at the first-ever PAX East this year are Protomen and The Video Game Orchestra.

GamePro caught up with Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo to ask him how the acts are selected each year and what PAX wants to do with music in the future. Khoo tells us that band-scouting for PAX is a collaborative process for the Penny Arcade team and they try to pick a lineup that "feels right" for PAX.

"We try our best to keep the lineup as fresh as possible, and given we only have a few hours each night, it means that some bands get rotated in and out time to time," Khoo said. "We're always looking for new talent, so that sentiment will always be there. But at the end of the day, the goal is to deliver the most entertaining and enriching gaming-concert experience we can. Something worth noting, however, is an area the MAGfest guys are running called the JamSpace - it's just a bunch of musical instruments available for anyone to play and record their game music interpretations. We're pretty excited about that."

So are we.