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Among all the myriad events and announcements of E3 2011--some bombastic, some evolutionary--the unveiling of the Wii U was one that, no matter who you asked, generated some degree of mixed feelings. As gaming press and players, what we saw from Nintendo's future console controller produced sensations of excitement, skepticism, ambivalence, and intrigue.

That might be due partly to the expectations that Nintendo set for itself. The Wii was a new experience, a new idea. It also might be due in part to Sony's PSVita stealing some of the spotlight a day before; the handheld device actually has … Read more

For a trade show all about the latest and greatest in interactive entertainment, it's somewhat shocking that many of the most popular video games being played right now are either underrepresented, or not represented at all. We are, of course, speaking about the social and casual games that have audiences larger than almost any traditional console game, and what's more, have managed to tap into the recurring revenue stream of microtransactions that seems to elude so many others.

This is no unintentional oversight. Many attendees of E3, the Game Developers Conference, and other industry events say that games such as Farmville and Cityville are not "real games," and that even mentioning them in the same breath as Halo or Gears of War would be to cheapen the entire medium.

At E3, these kinds of games are woefully underrepresented, despite having in many cases tens of millions of players (MAU, or monthly active users, is the standard metric for social games--the most popular game of this genre, Zynga's CityVille, currently has 90 million monthly active users). If you looks around artfully, however, you can still find a few examples. EA's social/casual subsidiary PlayFish, is here, and has scored with games such as Pet Society and Madden NFL Superstars. At E3, a portion of EA's giant floor space was devoted to The Sims Social, a Facebook version of the popular suburban life simulation game. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--While Nintendo created a splash with the Wii U, its 3DS handheld remains in an awkward state of affairs after being upstaged by the PlayStation Vita debut the day before.

The 3DS has only been on store shelves in the U.S. since March, but the system faces an uphill challenge against a competitor in the Vita that has the same price and arguably more-robust technical specs, along with an impressive assortment of games.

Good games are what the 3DS particularly lacks a strong supply of, but Nintendo's press conference focused largely on firing off big-ticket franchise names … Read more

Earlier this morning Nintendo introduced the Wii U, the successor to the Wii. Think of the Wii U as a sort of DS and Wii hybrid, combining touch and motion controls, with an on-screen HD gaming experience.

We were lucky enough to get some hands-on time with a collection of Wii U game demos and time with the tablet controller; here are our impressions.

… Read more

LOS ANGELES--Nintendo got the next wave of console wars started today with the introduction of the next entry to its arsenal, the Wii U, at the company's E3 presentation.

The new console, with an iPad-like controller, will be available next year, as the company had said in April.

Nintendo didn't offer the price of the console or any technical specifications. But it nevertheless wowed a partisan audience at the Nokia Theater here in Los Angeles with a video of novel new gameplay. The company never showed the device itself or any live demonstrations of the console or controller.

But in the video, Nintendo showed how gamers could use a TV screen and the screen on the controller at the same time to play games, and how they could use each on its own. Using both screens, for example, a gamer playing video golf put the new controller on the ground, where it became a sand trap with a ball in it. The player took a swing with a Wii controller and the ball flew onto the TV screen and landed on the green.

In battle games, players can flick throwing stars at opponents with their finger on the new controller. The weapon then flies onto the television screen.

Using the screen separately, gamers could play a traditional board game like Othello, where they move chips over a the board by touching the screen. And they can also use the screen for video calls and for surfing the Web. The controller features a 6.2-inch screen, has a rumble feature, a microphone, two speakers, an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a front-facing camera.

Nintendo Global President Satoru Iwata said the company expects the console can be loved by hardcore and casual gamers alike.… Read more

LOS ANGELES--This is largely a rhetorical question, as Apple is not fond of making appearances at trade shows, including CES and Computex. In fact, Apple dropped out of the one trade show it regularly participated in, the Macworld Expo, a couple of years ago. Additionally, this year has an additional wrinkle, as Apple is hosting its own WWDC conference the very same week as E3.

Yet, the question is not as ridiculous as it seems. One area of interactive entertainment that has experienced tremendous year-over-year growth recently is the mobile games segment currently dominated by iOS and the triple-play of … Read more

Looking back at previous coverage of the annual Electronic Entertainment Exposition, I found several photo galleries of images cobbled together from as far back as 1999.

For the past few years I've largely left the photographic duties to our able staff photographers, who have done an excellent job of chronicling the show, but I thought it might be fun to round up some of the slideshows of personal pics that we've run previously.

With the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo happening simultaneously with the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this year, those in the habit of making technology-announcement predictions have a big week ahead of them. We've put our collective heads together to make some forecasts, and you're welcome to play along at home and score us on how we do.

To be fair, many of these have been so reliably leaked or telegraphed that they're virtually sure bets. Others seem likely based on corroborating clues we've seen or historical precedent. We've also thrown in a final list of E3 … Read more

Even though it's supposedly an industry-only trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is an event of epic proportions for video game aficionados, as evidenced by the legions of fans who follow the show's daily announcements online, through blogs, news outlets, and (a more recent development) video feeds.

But despite its decade-plus place in the public consciousness (I've been attending since 1999), the E3 show has been to the brink of extinction more than once, and while it has pulled off a remarkable recovery over the past couple of years, there's still a chance history may repeat itself.

In brief, what happened was the trade show equivalent of a boom and bust cycle. Throughout the 2000s, game companies competed to outdo each other, with excessive budgets and outlandish displays, creating literal mini cities inside the Los Angeles Convention Center that easily trumped anything seen at the larger Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place in Las Vegas every January.

The trend peaked in 2006, after which the participants collectively realized that entirely too much money was being spent on the show, which had long since stopped being a place for retail buyers to make deals with publishers, and had become essentially a weeklong press conference. Simply put, the week's worth of media hits was judged to be simply not worth the investment.

At the time, the Entertainment Software Association, a trade organization that runs the event, agreed to retrench, scaling down the 2007 version into what then-Entertainment Software Association President Douglas Lowenstein called a "more personal, efficient, and focused" show. E3 went from 60,000 attendees the previous year to about 4,000, and from 400 exhibiting companies to fewer than 40. E3 2008 was a similarly small affair, returning to the Los Angeles Convention Center, but keeping the small, low-cost format.… Read more