E3 begins on Tuesday morning at the ungodly hour of 2am (AEST) and the Games On Net crew will be bringing you the latest news from the show – we’ll have a few people over there working the show floor, and a full team of newsbots here in Australia posting the latest news, videos and screens of newly announced games. With the show reportedly back to full strength this year, it’s going to be big, so I hope you enjoy our coverage and that your developer of choice announces something you want.

To get into the E3 mood, this week’s Warp Pipe is going to hop on the bandwagon and make a whole bunch of E3 predictions.

Extended Estimated Enumeration, or: Another E3 Prediction List (Aren’t Thesauruses Fun?)

As we all know, the game industry is full of attention whores, and the best way to fulfil their desires was to have a massive industry spectacle every May where everyone spent millions of dollars showing off their latest stuff, providing free alcohol for drunkard journalists and lots of little trinkets for the mouth-breathing neck beards that snuck in on the back of their little websites like “Nintendo Kicked My Dog” or “I Buy Video Games, So Companies Owe Me”. A couple of years ago, a bunch of stuffy suits decided E3 was too expensive, noisy, and full of useless kids with nits, so they gave them all the arse and moved the show to July, making it an invite only shindig. Last year’s show was kind of sucky, so they decided to make it more like the old one, go figure

Since E3 is where all the big announcements happen, I figure we’d spend this week’s column thinking up a bunch of crazy-yet-plausible possibilities for this year’s show.

That whole Metal Gear thing; since the “old man” in this week’s pictures was wearing a beret that loosely translated to “soldiers without borders” I’m going to say that it’s got something to do with Outer Heaven. I’d love for that to be a remake of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2, but the appearance of Raiden makes it tricky. Perhaps multiple Metal Gear projects are under way, but I wouldn’t expect to see any other surprises out of Konami. Rare released two games last year, which is awfully productive for them in modern times, but I’m hoping we’ll see them put out something new at Microsoft’s conference. Perfect Dark for Xbox Live Arcade to accompany a proper Perfect Dark sequel, or perhaps the same for Killer Instinct. Grabbed by the Ghoulies 2 would make me laugh, but I think I’m alone in my enjoyment of that game. Nintendo might actually get that the people who are watching E3 aren’t “alpha mom” Wii Fit owners. It won’t stop them having Cammie Dunaway show off Wii Fit Plus in a most awkward fashion. Expect Wii Motion Plus to be the focus of their press conference, along with a slate of unannounced first party Motion Plus titles. I’m hoping to hear about a Virtual Handheld system for the DSi (especially since it will drive down the price of all of the original GB, GBC and GBA games I want), but I’m expecting most of the big announcements to happen at their October press brief in Japan, yet again. Capcom was to have two secret titles revealed at E3, but they blew the lid on Tatsunoko vs. Capcom a little early. I’m leaning towards Devil May Cry 5 being their other secret one, but a little part of me would love to see it be a new Strider game or a Dino Crisis revival. Travel restrictions imposed by the company will make their showing kinda crappy. Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will be brought up for the first time in two years, with a loose 2010 date. Valve will also reveal their plans for the long awaited updates to the console versions of Team Fortress 2. Since Microsoft’s DLC policies suck, I expect it to either be a standalone release, or part of an uber Orange Box style compilation with Episode 3. Microsoft’s conference will be full of executives making arses of themselves in front of their new motion camera. Nobody will buy it come Christmas. Their conference will be dominated by Halo 3 ODST and Mass Effect 2. Alan Wake might get a mention. Expect lots of jabbering about how many million videos have been streamed over VOD services Australia and Europe doesn’t have access to, and a few announcements of exclusive downloadable content for upcoming Q4 games. I’d love to see them take another crack at “The Summer of Xbox Live Arcade”, but I’m not sure there’s enough good stuff in the pipeline for that to happen again. Expect to see a lot more “safe” sequels to existing products due to the economic downturn. Games in general will seem more iterative than before, which will probably lead to most gamers feeling a lot less excited after the show than they had expected. Weird games and downloadable titles probably won’t get as much attention. Sony’s supposedly got a few aces up their sleeve, but I’m not expecting any super huge new announcements. Their slate is already pretty full with Gran Turismo 5, God of War III], The Agency, MAG, Heavy Rain and DC Universe Online all due before the next E3. I’d hope to hear of news concerning a price drop on the PS3, and the new design of the PSP. Square Enix will announce a couple more new second string RPGs that will disappoint fans holding onto the slim hope of sequels to established franchises like Chrono or SaGa. I’d expect them to place more focus on expanding their western operations; perhaps they’ll pick up a few more surprises in the vein of Supreme Commander 2. Sega’s got a few titles left on board for 2009 in Alpha Protocol and Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics, but they tend to bring most of their games out in Q1 each year. I’d expect to see a new Sonic game on the Hedgehog Engine, a third Sonic for DS and more on the new Aliens vs. Predator game, the fate of Aliens: Colonial Marines. I don’t know if they’ll have any surprises, but a DS collection of some of their Japan-only mobile phone remakes of stuff like Streets of Rage would be nice. Shenmue III would be bliss, but that ain’t happening. Fanboys will cry bitter tears at a big name defection that won’t really mean much when the game is released. I reckon an expanded Metal Gear Solid 4 for Xbox 360 could fill that criterion. Like every year, I’ll be cranky after staying up til 3am two days in a row to watch boring, embarrassing press conferences and listening to aforementioned whining.		Name a reference that will be lost on most readers
		Big Boss or more dross?
		Obtusely deficient sub-title?
		More gruff, god-killing antics soon
		Is this the year we finally see Alan Wake?