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The other "highlight" of Nintendo's pre-E3 announcement was Satoru Iwata's assurance that the firm is already working on the successor to GameCube. "At Nintendo, we are not ready to act, we are already acting," Iwata-san had boldly stated. The Nintendo president also told the gathered, wooping faithful that he would offer his competitors no head start this time - although given Sony's position, we'd fancy its chances even if PlayStation 3 launched a year late.

If Microsoft's Xbox shindig was a bit disappointing, then Nintendo's soirée at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel was downright boring. Were it not for Shigeru Miyamoto's mucking around, Shinji Mikami joking on tape that he's still not been fired and the welcome sight onstage of Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani then we might have given up and gone home.

Although EA president John Ricietello lent his videoed face and star player Will Wright to Nintendo for their press conference, Sony fans got the whole man this morning, and with him he brought news that this year's nine EA Sports titles would work exclusively with PS2 online. Each title will even include online voice chat (dubbed EA Sports Talk).

By scheduling its pre-E3 press conference for Monday night, Microsoft presumably hoped to get the jump on Sony (tomorrow morning) and Nintendo (tomorrow afternoon) and grab some headlines in the meantime. And grab some headlines it will, but probably not for the right reasons.

27 hours without sleep was obviously going to cost this story one or two details, so just in case anybody wasn't aware, Microsoft has also confirmed its Xbox Live multimedia functions (mostly documented here), adding Xbox Live alerts to MSN Messenger, web stats, team facilities, a sort of global chat room and the ability to invite people into games even if they're just mucking about in single-player.

Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has stayed at number one in the UK All-Formats sales charts for a second week, while Xbox and Cube releases for Burnout 2 propelled it back into the top ten.

Metro3D has announced that it will be releasing Armored Core 3 in the middle of Q2 this year, which is... erm, right about nowish surely? Anyway, AC3 had a massively successful reception in its native Japan earlier this year, and Metro3D is hoping to repeat that success on these shores. We're still waiting for a firm release date, but until then, gawp at some of the tasty flying robot action in the screenshots.

In the calm before the inevitable deluge of E3 news, we thought we'd take the opportunity to let you know that popular Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat has received an update, bringing the version number up to .35 (cheers to Errol for bringing it to our attention).

We reported on this some time back, but LucasArts has reminded us all that Sam & Max, the intrepid dog and rabbit detective duo, are to make a return next Spring in Sam & Max Freelance Police. The press release says the game is "a whimsical miasma of fur-flying action" and contains "unnerving cross-species jocularity" - how could we keep phraseology like that out of the public eye?

Nintendo has announced that Wario will make his GameCube debut on 20th June. Wario World is an action adventure with puzzle elements that sees Wario attempting to retrieve his wealth, after a mysterious gem turns his entire gem collection into monsters. What we've seen of the game so far actually looks like great fun, with Wario picking up, swinging and lobbing enemies into each other, and fighting off large crowds of adversaries with some impressive slapstick violence, sort of reminiscent of Power Stone, but only a wee bit.

We're not sure whether the much-vaunted "convergence" between Hollywood and the gaming industry is such a good idea. Acclaim, however, seems happy to play on the idea that we'd all be better off this way with the announcement that the cast members and writing team of the popular Alias TV series have been signed to work on the eponymous stealth combat title currently in development for PS2, Xbox and PC. Not having seen the series myself, I have no idea if this is a good thing. Is it any good?

Resurrecting arcade legends and bringing them up to date is a great idea on paper, but it never seems to work out all that well in the real world. In fact, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel just to think of any arcade classics which have turned into enjoyable games once passed through the modern Make-It-3DTM development process; Defender, anyone? We didn't think so.

Eidos seems rather excitable and keen to wave about its new character-centric action platform whatsit Whiplash under our nose, a game that's in development for PS2 and Xbox by Crystal Dynamic. There aren't actually many details about the game around, but the title is apparently attempting to cash in on the rush of Jak & Daxter-alikes.

The Xbox may have had the best launch line up in the history of gaming, but it's been a barren old time since then for exclusive killer apps. Sure, there's been Splinter Cell (briefly exclusive at least), Panzer Dragoon Orta (which sold zip), and, um, Project Gotham Racing (which was MSR 1.5 in some people's eyes), but aside from those it's a struggle to think of many truly benchmark titles.

The Electronic Entertainment Exposition (wahey!) runs from May 14th to 16th this year at the LA Convention Center, and Eurogamer will be on hand to consume vast amounts of beer, wine, whiskey, margaritas, nachos, tacos, pizza, burgers, steaks and quite frankly anything else that works to the detriment of our health. We will also write things about videogames, and try and find some tacky limited edition nonsense to give away on the website when we get back. Because we're good to you like that.

Argonaut will have its largest presence to date at this year's E3. Not many details released for each of the titles on the developer's stand or its two publishers (Vivendi and EA), save water-racing title Carve and Powerdrome, a remake of the Amiga/ST retro classic designed by Michael Powell, the man behind the original incarnation of the racer. Other titles on show include SWAT:GST, New launch and Bionicle.

Argonaut is apparently so keen to show off its new water-rendering technologies that its built a whole game around them. Carve apparently "harnesses the sheer power of the Xbox" in a 27 level water racing game, with detailed comic-styled racers and water that... well, it's watery. The racer will also feature full support for online racing via Xbox Live.

Despite the show finally coming to an end (thank you God), Vivendi has announced the development of a new Buffy the Vampire Slater title for PS2, Xbox and GameCube. Buffy the Vampire Slater: Chaos Bleeds will be developed by Eurocom and is slated for release in August.

Well it was only a matter of time wasn't it? Vivendi has announced the securing of a deal with Turbine Entertainment (of Asheron's Call fame) to develop Middle-Earth Online, a massively multiplayer Lord of the Rings game. Not many details available as yet, but you can expect to be able to form kinships and build race-specific dwellings, and probably fight over pebbles and sticks and things.

LucasArts has revealed new details on its original project currently being by The Collective, Inc. Wrath Unleashed - formerly just Wrath - is said to be a part intense combat and part strategy. The strategy part sees players commanding an army of mythological creatures attempting to take control of a large world map that's split into tiles. When two armies collide on each tile, the game switches to an intense combat mode, with players receiving full control of their creatures and enabling them to engage in one-on-one fisticuffs. Wrath Unleashed is expected to release this Winter on PS2 and Xbox.

New World Order is the sort of game that reminds you to read reviews, play demos, ask your friends, check message boards, and force freckly bastard Virgin Megastore employees to take polygraph tests before you hand over your money. For that, and for that alone, it must be applauded.

Rainy Sunday afternoons. In the UK (and presumably 'on the continent'), we all jabber on about putting things away for a rainy day, and we always mean Sunday afternoon, because the rest of the week is tied up with work, sleep, play and debauchery. In the case of Kristan, Eurogamer's resident technophile, this particular rainy Sunday afternoon was given over to setting up Xbox Live. Embarrassing though it may sound, the closest our little ginger hero has ever come to Live is via other people (like Michel Cassius, for example).

Two words: Doom III. Anyone who has seen this running will know it represents the true next-gen in gaming visuals. Whether it stands up in the gameplay deparent remains to be seen, but it’s in our top five ‘must see as soon as humanly possible’ list, and is arguably the star of Activision’s E3 2003 line-up, which is the usual eclectic mix of hardcore and mass market.

Austrian publisher JoWooD, the firm with the silliest capiltalisation around, has become the 40th games company to reveal its E3 line up. Ladies and Gentlemen, let us enlighten you.

THQ played its E3 hand today, and as with every single other publisher it reckons it has delivered the “most compelling line-up to date”.

Doing a little bit of detective work, it’s possible to deduce that Microsoft will have one of the most impressive line-ups of games at this year’s show – certainly one of the biggest, with several big titles yet to be announced. This is what we reckon we might be greeted with in a few days time…

Vivendi Universal is steadfastly refusing to announce its E3 line-up, so we've knocked one up anyway [update: now they have, it turns out we were right. Nice!] An enormous amount of good stuff to check out, mixed in with the usual mass market licensed fluff, but the star of Vivendi's show, Half Life 2, will be on Ati's stand, oddly enough...

After 90 E3 lists, our heads are starting to hurt [for I have more than one -Ed]. BAM! Entertainment is the latest publisher to reveal its line-up for the show, and has a handful of multiformat licensed titles, all scheduled for an autumn 2003 release...

Konami has been impressively tight-lipped regarding its E3 line-up this year, but it has announced enough titles of late to build up a fairly accurate guess list. Check back next week to see what the Japanese darling of gaming has announced for us.

With only a few hours to spare, we've been enlightened on Namco's E3 line-up, with a bunch of titles that we know very little about. Top of our list to check out is R: Racing Evolution, which is hopefully better than the rather uninspiring screenshots suggest. IGN revealed earlier that the game features real-world licensed cars, 11 real tracks, and eight different race styles, including circuit, drag, rally and "more".