I'm glad its now invite only. There used to be SOME standards to getting in the normal way, but people took advantage of it too much. Too many fansites with 5 readers, all "in on it", and too many people getting their extended families in. E3 should be about showing off games to the press, and investors, because in the end thats what they're paying all that money and allocating all their time for at E3: exposure. Sure, some people are going to be mad they cant get in now to wait in line to play an alpha build of a game that wont be out for another year, but frankly E3 never was designed specifically for them to have that experience.
One thing that hopefully this will lead to is game videos without a bunch of kids moving in front of the camera. Every non-direct feed video I saw out of E3 had some tall mouthbreather or small 11 year olds shoulder moving in front of the camera, or them walking in front, etc. It must be frustrating for the press to deal with that.