While perhaps not the worst news in the world for the organizers behind the 2009 Game Developers Conference, they are still faced with the unfortunate shortcoming of attendance for this year's event versus that of last year's.

In 2008, the gathering of gaming's best and brightest drew in over 18,000 people into the fold. And this year? 17,000 and some change. A drop, but not a tremendous one. Given the state of the economy, it's quite possible there were some people who simply could not afford to make the pilgrimage, perhaps instead wishing to roll pennies for their E3 road trip instead. After all, we can't all be special guests Satoru Iwata or Hideo Kojima.

But even a slight downturn in attendance isn't enough to keep the GDC down; expect another one to come in 2010, from March 9th to 13th at the Moscone Center.