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Well, it's hard to call this good news for Nintendo: The storied game company announced late yesterday that it will not be putting on the standard "big goofy to-do" press conference at this year's E3 gaming showcase in Los Angeles.

It's finally time, folks. Microsoft has decided that they're going to pull back the curtain and let us in on "a new generation of games, TV and entertainment." What that actually means is anyone's guess, but they're almost certainly going to try and push whatever's coming next as an all-around device. Regardless, we'll all find out for certain soon enough -- Microsoft's hosting an Xbox reveal event on May 21st.

It seems like only yesterday when Microsoft's Xbox 360 was hailed as the pinnacle of video game hardware and left us all waiting in long lines in front of the local Best Buy to bring home the future of gaming entertainment. Sadly, now in 2012, the old girl is starting to show some cracks and is known to make a make a mess in the house from time to time, which is all indicative of a brand new game system on the horizon. It's a forgone conclusion that Microsoft is already hard at work cobbling together the successor to the Xbox 360, but the question really boils down to when this new system will be unveiled. According to an Electronic Entertainment Expo countdown clock that was posted on the blog of Microsoft's Major Nelson yesterday, we may at last get our first glimpse of the next addition in the Xbox family later this year. With that, let the speculation commence!

Having fun playing Halo 4 on your good ol' Xbox 360? You are? Good, good, enjoy it while it lasts because by Thanksgiving of next year, Microsoft is planning to launch the latest iteration of their game system just in time for the holiday shopping season. That and the company wants to relish watching you squirm over the knowledge you're currently playing on a console soon to be out of date within the year.

With E3 in full swing, gamers and journalists alike are all over the press conferences and announcements. This year in particular, things have been a little dull. Microsoft's press conference was chiefly concerned with the Xbox as a "media console," and Nintendo's Wii U stuff sort of panders to the Wii Fit-using masses. Many of the hardcore gamers who watch increasingly accessible E3 footage are feeling a little miffed that their interests aren't being catered to. After all, they're the real fans, and E3 is about real gaming, damn it! Well, not really. E3 is a trade show; it's not for gamers.

If you're really hoping that head Valve honcho Gabe Newell is going to announce a third game in one of their more popular series at this year's E3, you obviously don't know that Valve can't count to three. YouTube user aekime needed to learn Flash, so aekime made this little animation as both an extremely accurate prediction of what Valve will do come this year's E3, and a way to, you know, learn Flash. Gaben approves.

Sony's and Microsoft's conferences were basically par for the course, nothing too surprising, franchises we know and love, like or hate, and a surprisingly low price tag for the PSP 2, now known as the PS Vita. Last, we have Nintendo. They're notoriously awful at E3, leaving us with such amazing memories as using Wii Music as a conference surprise that ultimately fell flat because it was ridiculous. With the news that Nintendo was to show off the Wii's sucessor, known as Project Cafe, surely, this Nintendo conference wouldn't be the widely-perceived failure that many of their previous conferences were, right?

Well, with only a handful of games shown and announced, none of which being new first party IPs, an E3 presentation that honestly seemed put together the night before the conference, and their new console and controller combo, dubbed the Wii U, I think we might've just witnessed the beginning of the end of Nintendo. It happened once before with the GameCube, but Nintendo had the Nintendo DS and Wii rushing in to save the day. This time around? The Nintendo 3DS only launched a few months ago, so a new handheld can't really rush in and save the day. If the Wii U fails, a new console can't come rushing in to save the day like the Wii did, and it seems like this would be it for Nintendo. It is admittedly difficult to predict if a weird concept will succeed or fail, but after that press conference, it seems like Nintendo neither cares about either market of gamers (hardcore or casual), nor has any idea what they're doing anymore. If Nintendo flounders this generation, we can look back at this conference and pinpoint the exact moment in time their downfall began.

We've seen what Microsoft had (or didn't have, depending on how disappointed you were) to offer from this year's E3. Did Sony do any better? The short of it: It was similarly predictable, though it did have a few more interesting surprises -- the price and date of the PSP2, otherwise known as the NGP, now officially known as the PS Vita have been set, and Sony matched Nintendo's flailing 3DS in price with a $249 price tag on the non-3G PS Vita model and a $299 price tag on the 3G-enabled model. An honestly stunning move, considering the Vita's tech is far more powerful than the tech inside the 3DS and must be much more expensive to produce. They also announced a 24-inch PlayStation brand 3D television and 3D glasses bundle for the (again) honestly low price of $499. As for games, everything we already knew about: Uncharted 3 looked great, the previously-mentioned God of War PSP games bundle is indeed coming to the PS3, BioShock Infinite will include Move functionality and come with a free copy of BioShock, the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD remake bundle got dated for September, and there was a bunch of PS Vita news, as well as a few new games and added Move support. Jack Tretton also gave a sincere, though kind of awkward, apology regarding the recent PlayStation Network hack mess.

Are you ready to dive into Sony's presser?

Nintendo's E3 presentation is live and underway right now; though they've led off with small things, the two big questions on people's mind are 1. what Project Cafe, Nintendo's next-gen console, will be like, and 2. if there's any new magic in store for the 3DS, which lacked strong launch titles. We'll have a full recap later. Check it out postjump:

The yearly gaming convention that steals away many a gamer's sleep has begun. Wake the fanboys, stoke the fires: E3 is upon us, and nary a gaming soul will be spared. E3 kicked off with Microsoft's keynote this year. They announced a few doozies; Halo 4 and Gears of War 3 made an appearance. They announced a few things that will most likely be duds with the core Xbox gaming audience; A Disneyland Kinect game (they didn't even get the better Disney) and a Sesame Street game developed by none other than gaming legend Tim Schafer, which still feels like a waste of Tim Schafer's talents (he could be using them on Psychonauts 2!). A bunch of Kinect integration was discussed -- some good, some forgettable -- as well as the addition of YouTube, Bing, and an Xbox Live television streaming service. They also announced one big surprise: Minecraft on the Xbox 360.

Travel past the break for the full recap. That is, if you're prepared to begin this year's descent into E3 madness.

Unless this is a Jedi-level psyche-out, there's not going to be any Half-Life 2: Episode 3 at this year's E3 expo. Or any DotA 2, or Left 4 Dead 3, or, for that matter, Portal 3. Because Valve won't be coming to E3 2011 at all. The video game development firm sent the above email to journalists in response to inquiries about setting up interviews for E3: "Well, we are not showing any titles at this year's show. So no appointment is needed. Thanks" Valve is also not listed on the E3 exhibitors' list. (via Escapist. pic via GamePro.)

One of the big disappointments at E3 this year was that Sony's rumored PSP 2 never materialized: Instead, the grand finale to their presentation was a Twisted Metal reboot. Well, according to a new Wall Street Journal report, Sony is working on a new portable device that you'll be able to play games with.

Intriguingly, it doesn't sound like a new PSP, but rather like a new cross-category gadget that melds handheld gaming consoles, e-readers, and plain old computing:

While every entertainment media outlet that ever covers gaming is sure to release some list of top picks from E3, the Game Critic Awards is the closest we come to a unified opinion. That is because it's merely a conglomeration of all the other reviewers. After carefully and meticulously assembling and comparing the opinions of the 21 participating news outlets, winners are decided. The process takes weeks. Those weeks just ended. Behold, the winners are chosen. Here they all are.

The Story of the Original Star Wars Poster (LA Times)

Metriod: Other M Trailer (Joystiq)

Twilight for Men (NSFW) (QDB)

E3 In Review (Kotaku)

Rain Powered Umbrella Drum (Tuvie)

Violinist Provides All Sound for Super Mario Bros. (Visionclassicjp)

If Sports Got Reported Like Science (Uffish)

(image via HuffPo.)

These squeeze-toy-alien-headed dancers were part of a clearly rehearsed but well meaning flash mob that materialized at some point during the opening day of E3 to publicize Toy Story 3: The Video Game. Why did we not hear about this until now? Allow Kotaku to explain:

Opening day? Let's see, that puts me at the Sony press conference, cursing at the internet and tapping away at my netbook's tiny keyboard. Not a fair trade, methinks.