And finally, this is really it! There's no stopping E3 now! The committee for the E3 Expo 2009 has now released the floor plans for the said event. Posted over at their official website are the layouts for the West Hall, South Hall, and the 2nd Level Directory. Details after the jump.

If last week's on-shelves superstar is Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), today we have Steven Spielberg, the Academy Award-winning director of ET, Jaws and Jurassic Park. No, we won't be playing the director in a video game. Rather, we can now get a feel of his brainchild puzzle video game, Boom Blox. See what other game titles will be released this week over at the full article.  

The holiday season is almost here, and we'll most likely see lots of console units and gaming software end up underneath the Christmas tree and in the Christmas socks of all good children. However, too much demand that outweighs the actual supply is always a bad thing.

Analyst Colin Sebastian from Lazard Capital Markets said that there will indeed be a general hardware shortage, not only for the Wii (as mentioned by Reggie Fils-Aime in his statement that there will be a Wii console shortage this holiday season). Explained Sebastian,

Holiday hardware demand may outstrip supplies. We believe one of the themes from the upcoming holiday period could be hardware supply constraints, driven by ongoing strong demand for Nintendo’s Wii and a shift in Xbox 360 unit sales from 4Q into the September quarter, while Sony’s PS3 and PSP may benefit from lower price points.

So aside from the almost-inevitable Wii shortage, we may also witness shopping brawls over who gets the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3? Certainly not an impossible scenario, what with the release of the more affordable PlayStation 40GB SKUs, and quite possibly the newly launched Xbox 360 arcade SKU, which is aimed at the casual market.

 

The E3 Trade Show has been the gaming industry's most revered gathering since it started way back in 1995. The traditional format was a series of larger than life events for everyone to drool over. For most people, this setup was one that worked well, but industry insiders may have been thinking otherwise all along.

In July 31, 2006, E3 organizers announced that the marquee event would be reconstructed and a new format was revealed in October 13 of the same year. What we witnessed in E3 2007 was a sleeker, harder to access, less hectic, and more professional E3 Business and Media Summit.That's not to say that there was anything wrong with the new model. It may not be as flamboyant as it was before, but all the big announcements along with spectacular sights and sounds were there, and that's good enough for most of us.

Taking a look back now at everything that transpired in the few days of gaming heaven, we saw some amazing stuff coming from the three big players of this generation's console cycle. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo Company Ltd. all had their chance to deliver their pieces, and what we got was a nice mix of corporate and strategic mindsets reflected in the content and manner that the three dished out.

Let's take them one at a time. Just click on the Full Article and read on.