  The eccentricity in coordinate-space at midrapidity of the overlap zone in
high-energy heavy-ion collisions predicted by the $k_\perp$-factorization
formalism is generically larger than expected from scaling with the number of
participants. We provide a simple qualitative explanation of the effect which
shows that it is not caused predominantly by edge effects. We also show that it
is quite insensitive to ``details'' of the unintegrated gluon distribution
functions such as the presence of leading-twist shadowing and of an extended
geometric scaling window. The larger eccentricity increases the azimuthal
asymmetry of high transverse momentum particles. Finally, we point out that the
longitudinal structure of the Color Glass Condensate initial condition for
hydrodynamics away from midrapidity is non-trivial but requires understanding
of large-$x$ effects.
