The E3 Media & Business Summit, reeling from criticism across the industry following its poor show for 2008, is looking to fix the problem.

The Board of Directors of the Electronic Software Association has officially proposed and is discussing the possibility of opening the show to the public, effectively reversing a 2006 decision to scale down the show and only open to the press, according to a rumor on Kotaku.

The show technically has always been an invite-only affair, but prior to 2006 the show was an extravagant frenzy of publicity and parties from companies all around the gaming industry. When the atmosphere was calmed into a more networking-friendly convention, the quality of games shown--and gamer enthusiasm--has steadily declined, leading Spore designer Will Wright to call E3 2008 "the walking dead."

Meanwhile, public enthusiasm for a convention has proven a valuable tool for organizers. Last weekend's Penny Arcade Expo, a fan favorite, drew over 58,000 attendees and announced an expansion in the business. The Games Convention, also open to the public, is also on the move.

Will Wright, the Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame designer responsible for Spore and The Sims, dubbed the E3 trade show "the walking dead."

Talking to GamesIndustry, Wright added to a rising chorus in the games industry claiming the E3 Media & Business Summit has outlived its usefulness since evolving from the over-the-top Electronic Entertainment Expo to a low-key industry meet. This year's E3 came under heavy fire for having a weak collection of products on show.

"I think they [the organizers of E3] were looking for a way to sign the arms treaty and de-escalate the whole thing," Wright reasoned. "I understand why they really pulled the plug on the big E3. Looking at the amount of money a company like EA would spend on it, it was ridiculous amounts of money just to be present and competitive with everyone else."

Still, much of the industry has scrambled for something to fill the void left by the ghost of E3. Many studios are putting their stock in the Penny Arcade Expo, which begins tomorrow.

Organizers of the Game Developers Conference and DICE may be moving to an invite-only system for members of the press next year, Kotaku reported today.

GDC director Jamil Moledina expressed concerns of maintaining the show's atmosphere and scope in the face of an ever-rising attendance rates and an increased press presence.

"We don't have it nailed down, but we are looking at moving to an invite model for press access at GDC," Moledina said. "It's meant to be a networking event for people who make games, but more and more we are seeing a lot of individuals who are obtaining press credentials who aren't full-time press. It's kind of open to being spoofed."

Increased press presence is also leading DICE organizers to head in a similar direction. "The academy's role, first and foremost, is to make sure the academy members are comfortable and that the role of the media is to be there to watch and not participate," said Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president Joseph Olin.

The movement towards invite-only events mirrors the Entertainment Software Association's decision last year to retool the E3 Media and Business Summit, which now requires attendees to be invited directly by publishers and developers. In the absence of larger-scale events, many developers are moving towards smaller, invite-only press gatherings to announce and demonstrate upcoming titles.

The ESA's annual E3 Media & Business Summit will return to the Los Angeles Convention Center when it runs between July 15 and 17, 2008, the organization has announced.

This year's shift towards a smaller, more professional show with more exclusive attendance was accompanied by a change in location, with the event taking place across numerous locations in Santa Monica instead of a centralized hub, as in previous years.

However, the show's return to its former holdings does not indicate the ESA will be loosening the strict invitation-only attendance policy on the event once known for its glamorous excess.

"The Summit is first and foremost about getting business done," the ESA told Gamasutra. "The intent of this show is to be a business-to-business opportunity and it isn’t centered or focused on general consumers."

Newsweek's game guy N'Gai Croal published a fairly candid interview today with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Croal's questions elicited some pretty interesting responses from Nintendo's lead man, including the fact that Nintendo has several new projects in development that it purposefully didn't announce at the trade show.

"However, we are definitely working on new franchises and we just didn't choose to talk about them yesterday," Iwata told Croal. "Now, if we didn't feel that we had gained a lot of popular momentum and with success that it's shown so far, we might have tried to get out a little more information and do an upcoming products, again, just to build some excitement, but since we do have that momentum right now, we chose not to do so."

The interview touched on Nintendo's pretty strong first party market share, which Iwata said will soon be lessened. "Next year, we're going to... Read more

It has taken a while, but Microsoft finally released the Halo Wars E3 2007 presentation showing more from the Xbox 360 exclusive strategy game. The 10 minute long video offers gameplay footage and narration by lead designer Graeme Devine.

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As discussed in this week's ShackCast, I attended an E3 presentation for the Mistwalker-designed, I.T. Planning-developed RPG Lost Odyssey, which is headed to Xbox 360 later this year. I had been pretty excited about the game beforehand, but following my time with it, I couldn't help but note that the latest effort from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi felt a little familiar.

Lost Odyssey stars Kaim, an immortal who has lived for over 1000 years, and in true RPG fashion, can't remember any of it. As the game progresses, he'll recall more and more of his past exploits while dreaming. These repressed memories are presented in the form of short stories penned by Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, and once unlocked are available to read at any time under the "A Thousand Years of Dreams" menu option.

Capcom's Phoenix Wright is back for a third round of lawyering on Nintendo DS, and Carlos Bergfeld took a hands-on session with the game to deliver his early verdict on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations.

I played a good portion of the game's first episode, Turnabout Memories, which enlists players as a young Mia Fey, Phoenix Wright's mentor from the other titles. In a stunning portrayal of turnaboutery, it appears the young Wright has committed murder over a squabble involving his girlfriend's ex. Despite being one of the most text-heavy series on any console, Trials and Tribulations flaunts its writers' finesse by maintaining fervent interest throughout the court proceedings.

Rayman Raving Rabbids is returning on Wii and DS for more mini-game madness, and the game has more of a multiplayer focus this time around. Following up on our previous coverage, Carlos Bergfeld got some some hands-on time with both incarnations of Ubisoft's upcoming sequel.

I had the most fun with what an Ubisoft rep described as the Rabbids' interpretation of American football. It was essentially what young children innocently refer to as "smear the queer," with one football-toting Rabbid trying to keep the ball from the others. The Nunchuk's analog stick controlled a Rabbid's running, and shaking the Wii remote made the characters dive viciously at the ball-bearing bunny.

As our E3 content winds down, we've got a brief updated look at Capcom's upcoming light-gun esque zombie shooter, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. With a Wii Zapper peripheral available for use at the demo station, Carlos Bergfeld tried the game both with and without the device to find out which one let him down zombies faster.

I played the level both with the Zapper and without, and came away with mixed feelings. Using it certainly added the feeling of rocking an arcade shooter, but aiming wasn't as accurate as with the Wii-mote alone. I did get better by the end of the level, but it still felt like I was more of a marksman playing sans Zapper.

The final E3 impression articles are up at MPOGD, taking a look at Unreal Tournament 3, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest 2: Rise of Kunark.

I had the chance to take a look at Sony Online's action-based MMO The Agency last week, but I didn't really learn anything new. I sure had a hell of a time getting in the door, though. Follow me on a harrowing tale of dangerous doormen, secret data tapes, and potato salad. Sneak a peek.

An unassuming developer ambles by, and I pull him into a choke-hold before he can trigger the alarm. His eyes widen in shock as I turn my chiseled arm into a vice, properly constricting his voice before the interrogation to come. "If you want to live, tell me what your PVP plans are," I growl harshly into his ear, dragging him back into the shadows of a food cart. Read more...

We liked a lot of games at this year's E3--but we liked some better than others. The Shack's Best of E3 2007 compiles the top picks from Shack editors Chris Remo, Chris Faylor, Nick Breckon, and Carlos Bergfeld, briefly touching on what makes the games so appealing and linking to fuller coverage of each one. If you only read, uh, twenty game previews this month, let them be these twenty.

Rock Band, from Harmonix Music Systems, deserves special mention for being the only game to show up on the lists of all four editors. It's just that awesome. Other games with multiple mentions include Retro Studios' Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Valve's The Orange Box, and Irrational Games' BioShock.

This open-ended title from THQ and developer Blue Tongue will be compared to Katamari Damacy in every preview and review you read--except this one. Instead, I get to the squishy core of the Blob, and evaluate whether painting an entire town all on your own is as fun as it sounds. Color your opinion.

Ultimately, there really is no finish line in de Blob. You move on to new areas, and you gain more points, and you get fatter. It's hard to imagine being intensely motivated to move from level to level, although the simplistic story and gameplay aren't engrossing to the point of necessitating a satisfying reward. A THQ representative likened de Blob to the act of popping bubblewrap, and I would agree. Like bubblewrap, de Blob is a mindless, yet oddly satisfying distraction at heart.

Multiplayer Online Games Directory has a few more E3 previews, offering impressions of The Agency, Turok, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Death Track: Resurrection.

A couple more post-E3 articles at FiringSquad with JCal looking at the new Destroy All Humans! games, Heavenly Sword, Civilization Revolution and Fallout 3.

Super Mario Galaxy promises to be one of the first truly platforming-focused platformers of this console generation, and Nintendo toted it out to a second E3 to demonstrate some more levels. The company is being conservative with how much of the game it is willing to show at this point, but we tried out what was available, and it's looking great.

What is much more exciting about Super Mario Galaxy, and the aspect of the game I expect to fulfill the promise of the next worthy game in the core Mario series, is its promise of a return to actual platforming. While 2D platformers have had something of a renaissance lately, largely due to the Nintendo DS and PSP, their 3D cousins have been in a sad decline over the last generation or so. They seem to be devolving mainly into third-person action games with jumping thrown in, rather than actual platformers in which engaging physical traversal of the world itself is the crux of the gameplay.

When it releases this October, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass will be the second Zelda in two years--but, fortunately, its mechanics don't seem rushed. The touch screen control actually works, and I got to try it out firsthand at E3. Explore my impressions.

Most notable is the new map, which can be pulled down from the top screen to the bottom screen with the press of a button, and which can actually be drawn upon with the stylus--hallelujah! This is the kind of so-obvious-in-hindsight design decision that feels like it should be implemented in every exploration-based adventure or platformer on the system.

When 2K Games announced that Sid Meier's addictive strategy series was heading for consoles and "upping the action," fans weren't sure what that would entail--but as the first true Sid Meier-led Civ game since Civ II, it's probably in good hands. We got a look at Civilization Revolution (PS3, X360, Wii, DS) during last week's E3 to give you an idea of what to expect. Chris Faylor reports.

With Wii and DS versions also underway, the representative assured me that gameplay will be basically the same across the various platforms. "The way [Sid Meier] wrote the code, the game core actually doesn't know what system it's on," he noted. "It's the presentation layer that gets wrapped around the core that knows, so they will be able to play very similar."

Queasy Games' Everyday Shooter will surely garner praises from high society types, lauding its qualities as a piece of interactive art. They'll be right, but all you really need to know is the game is damn fun, as I found out firsthand at this year's E3 from Queasy Games' creator/composer/producer/sole employee Jonathan Mak. Look at all the pretties.

Inspired by the musical interlacement in games like Rez and Lumines from Tetsuya Mizuguchi as well as PARSEC47 from Kenta Cho, Everyday Shooter adds a freightload of flair to the now commonplace dual-joystick shooter formula. The combination of stunningly stylized visuals and musical melodies based on in-game performance brought me to a trance-like state of audio-visual euphoria.