Manscaping is what a man does to maintain his appearance, generally referring to certain places that shall remain nameless. Aren't you dying to know our answers? Hit the link below to see McWhertor, Ashcraft and I handle the question with varying degrees of tact, and be sure to check out the whole series for more opinions we'll probably regret having put to video later.

My Video Scrapbook of Precious E3 Memories Part 8: Do You Manscape? [GayGamer.net]

"Do awards translate into higher sales? The answer is yes, but not always. Additionally certain categories have a higher correlation between awards and sales. Since these awards began in 1998, the Best Console title has sold an average of 2.42 million units life-time in the U.S., according to NPD," Schachter explained.

Poor Jet Grind Radio. Had my beloved Dreamcast not taken a fall you would have been right up there as well. Schacter goes on to mention that while this works for Best Console title, it doesn't work across all categories, notable Best In Show, with past winners including the PSP and Gamecube, both of which performed poorly in the face of competition.

If you ask me, it isn't so much the receiving of an award that causes the jump in sales. The E3 Critics awards are an indicator of what games the press and reviewers were most interested in. The games the press get the most interested in are the games the press write about. The more positive coverage a game gets in magazines and online, the more likely people are to buy it. It isn't so much people buying the games because they won the awards...people buy the games because the press love them.

Isn't that a rather self-important view, you ask? If you look back at some of my favorite games over the past couple of years you'll see that there are obvious exceptions to the rule. Going to exclude myself from this based on Iron Man alone.

Do E3 Awards Translate into Big Sales? [GameDaily]

Platform Breakdown By Number Of Wins
Xbox 360: 8 (Down three from 2007)
PlayStation 3: 7 (Down one from 2007)
PC: 7 (Up three from 2007)
Wii: 1 (Same as 2007)
PSP: 2

But wait, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Game Critics folks have also broken down wins by publisher. Electronic Arts took home the most wins, despite taking one less category this year than last year. Sony was in second with three total wins and Bethesda in third. Microsoft rounded up the list, while Nintendo didn't win a single award as a publisher.

5 Wins:
Electronic Arts (-1 from 2007, +2 from 2006)
For 2008, EA won 5 out of 21 nominations — 24%
In 2007, EA won 6 out of 14 nominations — 43%
In 2006, EA won 3 out of 11 nominations — 27%
In 2005, EA won 7 out of 16 nominations — 44%
In 2004, EA won 5 out of 11 nominations — 46%
In 2003, EA won 0 out of 6 nominations — 0%

3 Wins:
Sony (+1 from 2007, +2 from 2006)
For 2008, Sony won 3 out of 11 nominations — 27%
In 2007, Sony won 2 out of 7 nominations — 29%
In 2006, Sony won 1 out of 10 nominations — 10%
In 2005, Sony won 2 out of 8 nominations — 18%
In 2004, Sony won 2 out of 8 nominations — 18%
In 2003, Sony won 3 out of 6 nominations — 50%

2 Wins:
Bethesda (new)

1 Win:
Microsoft (-2 from 2007, -2 from 2006)
For 2008, Microsoft won 1 out of 7 nominations — 14%
For 2007, Microsoft won 3 out of 8 nominations — 38%
In 2006, Microsoft won 3 out of 9 nominations — 33%
In 2005, Microsoft won 0 out of 8 nominations — 0%
In 2004, Microsoft won 4 out of 9 nominations — 44%
In 2003, Microsoft won 2 out of 13 nominations — 15%

Fallout 3 landed the coveted Best of Show award as well as Best Role Playing Game, while LittleBigPlanet landed Best Console Game and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game. However LBP was passed up for Best Original Game, with Mirror's Edge getting the nod instead.

Hit up the jump for the full list of winners and feel free to look back at our votes and the full finalist list, to see how they compare.

Best of Show
Fallout 3
(Bethesda Softworks for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

Best Original Game
Mirror's Edge
(DICE/Electronic Arts for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 36)

Best Console Game
LittleBigPlanet
(Media Molecule/Sony Computer Entertainment for PlayStation 3)

Best PC Game
Spore
(Maxis/EA)

Best Handheld Game
Resistance: Retribution
(Bend Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment for PSP)

Best Hardware/Peripheral
Rock Band 2 Ion “Drum Rocker” Set
(ION Audio/MTV Games for Xbox 360)

Best Action Game
Gears of War 2
(Epic Games/Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360)

Best Action/Adventure Game
Dead Space
(EA Redwood Shores/EA for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

Best Role Playing Game
Fallout 3
(Bethesda Softworks for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

Best Racing Game
Pure
(Black Rock/Disney Interactive Studios for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

Best Sports Game
Madden NFL 09
(Tiburon/EA for All Systems)

Best Fighting Game
Street Fighter IV
(Capcom for Arcade)

Best Strategy Game
Tom Clancy’s EndWar
(Ubisoft Shanghai/Ubisoft for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

Best Social/Casual/Puzzle
LittleBigPlanet
(Media Molecule/Sony Computer Entertainment for PlayStation 3)

Best Online Multiplayer
Left 4 Dead
(Valve/EAP for PC, Xbox 360)

Today, I turned in Kotaku's official ballot for who we think the winners should be. I have to say this was one of the harder years to judge. In particular you had games like Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet all vying for the same awards and let's not forget Spore, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, LEGO Batman, etc, etc.

Hit up the jump for our official ballot and then chime in to explain how we got it all wrong.

Best of Show
- Fallout 3

Best Original Game
- LittleBigPlanet

Best Console Game
- Fallout 3

Best Handheld Game
- Resistance: Retribution

Best PC Game
- Left 4 Dead

Best Hardware
- Lips Microphone

Best Action Game
- Left4Dead

Best Action/Adventure Game
- Dead Space

Best Role Playing Game
- Fallout 3

Best Fighting Game
- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Best Racing Game
- Midnight Club: Los Angeles

Best Sports Game
- Skate It

Best Strategy Game
- Tom Clancy's EndWar

Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game
- LittleBigPlanet

Best Online Multiplayer Game
- Left 4 Dead

It's too early to tell if the shrinking E3 has helped bolster id's own id-centric annual show QuakeCon. Usually id Software waits until the Saturday of the show to get official attendance numbers.

But Hollenshead is already sure that QuakeCon is the right way to host a gaming conference.

"I think we struck a balance of being vendor supported and still being in touch with the gamers," he said. "We had over 6,000 hours of volunteer time, that's like the polar opposite of E3,. which is all about business."

In fact id Software only officially showed up at E3 as a single announcement during the Electronic Arts press conference. They were there to tell the world that EA would be publishing their upcoming id Tech 5 game, Rage.

And even that had to be modified to fit in with what E3 and its attendees expect from the show.

"We were told you can't show this stuff because of these five reasons," Hollenshead said. "Last night (during QuakeCon) we had the bigger, better, more hardcore, not suitable for investor conference (announcement) for Rage and Doom."

[Pic]

So of course I took a look at my roommate situation and saw that Michael Fahey and I were going to be bunk mates for the next few days. No more than a minute later I get this hysterical laugh from Owen on instant message. "Adam, good luck trying to sleep BWA HA HA HA" he says. I was dumbfounded. There was no way I could have possibly been prepared for what was in store.

My E3 dreams were shattered when it came time to go to sleep. The great thing about being the Kotaku video intern (at the time) was that I got to capture all of the wonderful Hallmark moments. Video, after the jump

Owen writes:

Fahey warned me he had “a sleep disorder,” well before E3. So when I saw that Crecente paired me with him and Adam, I knew I’d better have a strategy for the one night I was there. That strategy was to get commode-huggin’ drunk and stay out as late as possible, so I would be too tired to care about any snoring. I slept like a log, even though Fahey sounded like someone taking a Husqvarna to a forest of old-growth. Poor Adam had only one drink at the party and was in bed by 11:30. He didn't stand a chance.

While we were surprised to see a lack of X-waggle and to learn that Kid Icarus was a no-show, that Duffy performance clearly came out of nowhere. Hit the jump for the final tally and keep your eyes peeled for the winner — and possible tie-breaker — of our E3 Fantasy Betting Pool contest. Woot!

Microsoft shows off new Xbox 360 user interface
The Redmond giant announced the new, Cover Flow-like dashboard at its press conference, dubbing it the New Xbox Experience. Reaction was mixed, but as an anti-fan of the current, hideous Vegas-strip look and feel, I welcomed it with open arms.

Microsoft announces Avatars, its own version of the Mii
We obviously knew about Avatars weeks in advance of E3, thanks to the tissue-thin security at marketing research company Intellisponse. We even knew what they looked like. It's doubtful that if we hadn't gotten an early preview, we'd have cared about the new feature any more than we do right now.

At least one celebrity calls one of the music games shown off on stage by the wrong name.
Unfortunately for the Viacom folks who gave The Who a huge sum of money to play the Rock Band party at the Orpheum, Pete Townshend confused the game with its main competitor, the Guitar Hero series. An honest mistake!

Don Mattrick will not sport Peter Moore style tattoos
We didn't see any. Did you?

Grand Theft Auto IV spin-off for Nintendo DS and/or PSP announced.
One of the titles Nintendo touted as core focused was Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a portable side story set in Liberty City. And it was merely announced, with nothing but a logo on display.

Nintendo will fail to announce a storage device for Wii, enraging the hardcore with another jovial, upbeat mass-market presentation including at least one head-scratcher peripheral.
Storage device? Nope. Jovial, upbeat mass-market presentation? Check. Head-scratcher peripheral? Wii MotionPlus might fit the bill, especially if you're a developer who wasted many man hours programming motion detection routines that can now be done with hardware.

One awkward, surprise celebrity walk-on will spawn its own internet meme for the coming age.
It may be a stretch to describe portions of Nintendo's media briefing as meme-spawning, but we're never going to forget the animated GIFs of DJ Ravi Drums wailing away on the air drums with Wii Music.

Finally, this one — Animal Crossing Wii gets stuffed animals with virtual keycodes — was almost correct, as Ubisoft announced that Petz branded stuffed animal with virtual keycodes, unlocking breeds in-game were due to be released. We take no pride in being almost right when it comes to Petz related topics.

The only rule? They have to be playable by the judges at E3.

The winning games haven't quite been selected yet, but the judges (including myself) have selected the finalists. Best of show nominees are Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, LittleBigPlanet, Mirror's Edge and Spore. LittleBigPlanet managed to get the most nominations across the board, with five, while both Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead nabbed four nominations. EA was the publisher with the most nominations, pulling in a whopping 21.

While I mostly agree with the list, there is one stand-out. Early on in the process we were told that Street Fighter IV the arcade machine was eligible for awards. Personally, as much as I love the game, I don't think that's fair. It's not a video game in the true sense of the word. When it does hit consoles that's fine, but I think mixing in arcade games with console and PC titles sets a bad precedent.

Best of Show
- Fallout 3
- Gears of War 2
- LittleBigPlanet
- Mirror’s Edge
- Spore

Best Original Game
- Flower
- Left 4 Dead
- Little Big Planet
- Mirror’s Edge
- Spore

Best Console Game
- Fallout 3
- Gears of War 2
- LittleBigPlanet
- Resistance 2
- Resident Evil 5

Best Handheld Game
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
- Chrono Trigger DS
- Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
- Resistance: Retribution
- Rhythm Heaven

Best PC Game
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Left 4 Dead
- Spore
- Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II
- Warhammer Online

Best Hardware
- Lips Microphone
- Rock Band 2 Ion “Drum Rocker” Set
- Wii MotionPlus

Best Action Game
- Far Cry 2
- Gears of War 2
- Left 4 Dead
- Mirror’s Edge
- Resistance 2

Best Action/Adventure Game
- Dead Space
- Prince of Persia
- Resident Evil 5
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
- Tomb Raider: Underworld

Best Role Playing Game
- Chrono Trigger DS
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Fable 2
- Fallout 3
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Best Fighting Game
- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
- Soul Calibur IV
- Street Fighter IV
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Best Racing Game
- Baja: Edge of Control
- Midnight Club: Los Angeles
- MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
- Pure

Best Sports Game
- Madden NFL 09
- NBA Live 09
- Shaun White Snowboarding
- Skate It
- Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09

Best Strategy Game
- Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
- Empire: Total War
- Halo Wars
- Tom Clancy’s EndWar
- Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II

Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game
- Guitar Hero World Tour
- Lego Batman: The Videogame
- LittleBigPlanet
- Rock Band 2
- Wii Sports Resort

Best Online Multiplayer Game
- Gears of War 2
- Left 4 Dead
- LittleBigPlanet
- Resistance 2
- Rock Band 2

During my practically nonexistent downtime, I wandered down to check out the offerings at the E3 installation of Indiecade 2008. Indiecade is, as the name implies, a celebration of a variety of indie games ranging from 'art games' to more mainstream-type titles. We've covered at least two of the games here on Kotaku — Jason Rohrer's Gravitation and The Odd Gentlemen's The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (begun as an MFA thesis at the University of Southern California). I had a chance to check out some of the games, talk to the people behind Indiecade, and watch the goings on — which included a surprising amount of hubbub and talent scouts from several companies lurking around. And there was more than just games: art prints were featured from various games (I even spied a screen from Blueberry Garden), plus videos of ARGs and installation games. My impressions and some pictures after the jump.

The playable games at this year's exhibition spanned an incredibly wide range:

• Bumper Stars, a Facebook app by Large Animal Games, described as "a deliciously addictive cocktail of pinball, pool, and fruit."
• Democracy 2 by Positech Games, a political simulation/strategy game.
• The Graveyard by Tale of Tales, "more like an explorable painting than a game" about an old lady who visits a graveyard.
• Gravitation by Jason Rohrer, about "mania, melancholia, and the creative process."
• ibb and obb by Richard Boeser, a cooperative game for two (and too damn cute).
• Jojo's Fashion Show 2 by Gamelab, a matching game (and one of the more mainstream titles).
• The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, a time-bending puzzle game featuring Victorian landscapes and mincemeat pie. And lots and lots of Winterbottoms.
• levelHead by Julian Oliver, which uses a solid plastic cube as its only interface. On screen, each face of the cube appears to be a room (all connected by doors) and players tilt and move the cube in an attempt to find an exit for the character.

As the list shows, Indiecade is dealing with a lot of different kinds of games — from the art games to the commercial games to all the types in between. I wandered around and had a lot of fun watching people play, especially the games with particularly unique mechanics (like levelHead). While my first visit down to the Indiecade corner of the exhibition hall was met with a reasonably subdued scene, it grew progressively more crowded through the day as more and more people gathered to take a look at the games.

One of the nice points about Indiecade is that you have a reasonably high likelihood of getting to chat with the game developers as you look at and play their games. I took the opportunity to talk at some length with Matt Korda (lead designer, lead artist and programmer) and Paul Bellezza (producer) about their game, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Matt and Paul are both recent graduates of USC's Interactive Media MFA program, and P.B. Winterbottom started as a thesis project ('we wanted to combine Buster Keaton with Back to the Future'), but is now being shopped around to publishers. Having written about the postmortem of the game, I was curious to try my hand at it — I was initially struck by the resemblance to Braid, since it too features a sort of time mechanic presented as filming the action going on. As I worked further through the demo, though, I was pleased to discover the flexibility given to the player in game. In many respects, there is no one 'right' answer to the game; I got to chat about this (as well as game design, academia, the program at USC and a whole host of other issues) with Matt and Paul. Indiecade provides a really nice venue for this sort of interaction, one thing I think is really a plus about the whole event. It's nice to hear about a game from the horse's mouth, and not just via the written word.

I also took some time to chat with Sam Roberts, the Indiecade Festival Director (and former director of the Slamdance festival). We chatted about Indiecade, independent development, and where we may be in five or ten years. Indiecade is a chance to showcase a variety of independent games that are, in many respects, the 'best of the best' — interesting and creative mechanics, fresh designs, and faces different from the usual AAA suspects. The designers and companies aren't going to change the industry overnight, but definitely have a lot to add to the current and future scenes (even if they are flying under the radar in comparison to the 'mainstream'). These aren't just 'pie in the sky' concepts — the playable versions presented were solid and polished pieces of game design. Of course, not all the examples are gunning for mainstream publication (games such as Gravitation, for example), but I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see Winterbottom and others popping up on a console near you in the future. Talent scouts for major companies weren't lurking around simply for the hell of it.

One of the nicest points about Indiecade is the fact that it's impossible to pigeonhole the games into one category (beyond 'indie,' which is in and of itself a rather nebulous label): when I turned from Winterbottom, I was face to face with the casual and commercial Jojo's Fashion Show 2, which was right around the corner from the more experimental levelHead. A wide variety of mechanics, design styles, and purposes were on display, and it made for a really interesting experience. I didn't even play most of the games, preferring to stand back and watch the designers give their talks and walk interested parties through playable portions. One of my particular favorites was the charming two-player game ibb and obb:

A painfully cute game, the real charm is in the gameplay, which requires two players to cooperate through candy-colored levels to finish. It's cute, clever, and creative — that creativity was one of the hallmarks of Indiecade, no matter what sort of form it took. Several of the games offered interesting intermediaries between the oftentimes 'vapid' casual market and more 'hardcore' titles: pick up and play titles that offer more than, say, Bejeweled. For someone like me — who games in cycles, and frequently just doesn't have the time to settle in with hours and hours of playtime — it's nice to see more options popping up that don't involve match 3 or hidden object games.

If you have the chance to check out Indiecade offerings at an expo or show, definitely do so — it's a nice opportunity to check out what's going on in the indie scene and chat with designers about their games. There are going to be installations at the Penny Arcade Expo and E For All, among others, and it's definitely worth taking some time to see what's going on.

Indiecade photos courtesy of Adam Robezzoli.

Call it nerd rage. Like loyalists of a once-partisan politician who tacks toward the center later in an election cycle, old-school gamers are coming to terms with the ramifications of their favorite’s newfound popularity. Though they have long craved mainstream respectability for video games, players sometimes resent the concessions their champion must make to attract mainstream adherents.

I think we all get why the industry is doing this; I think we all understand that we're talking about publicly traded corporations, who must show growth and not just profitability; I think we can see how it ties into the survival of the consoles and publishers we patronize, and how it affects their ability to give us what we really want. And I think we can all agree we wouldn't be caught dead playing candy-coated shit like Wii Music. In lawyer's parlance, we can stipulate to all of that.

But there's one description of "me" to which I won't:

"In the popular imagination, a gamer is a caffeine-fueled 26-year-old with a paunch, the local pizza place on speed dial and a hard drive full of Internet pornography."

They only got me on three of those. Plus my hard drive isn't full (duh) so really, two out of six.

As Game Studios Court the Mainstream, Old Customers Feel Marooned [The New York Times, Thanks reader Douginator]

In our last video featuring Sega of America's Simon Jeffery, the president of the company explains why we haven't seen any System 16 or System 24 games on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network. He also talks about his reluctance to put some of those games on Live due to Microsoft's requirement to update a game's graphics before porting.

Actually, to be fair it's more like they passed the buck... preemptively:

Several of you asked about Tecmo’s other titles that have been announced in Japan which were not on display at the show. Fatal Frame 4 (Wii) will be published by Nintendo, so please contact your Nintendo PR contact for further information. Rygar: The Battle of Argus (Wii) is in development and we are planning to provide more information this fall.

I contacted Nintendo for comment and take their stony silence as complete confusion. We'll update you as soon as they update us.

God Hand 2? Viewtiful Joe 3? Not coming, at least not from the Platinum Games, formerly Clover, guys. But that doesn't mean we wont' be seeing echoes of those games in their fancy, new Sega published games.

I think we got more than 12 months’ work done, and others went on an extended vacation. Hopefully they got some good vacation photos, because they sure weren't showing up at work... Of course I'm going to be biased, but so far what I've heard is that Sony and Nintendo have disappointed. And Microsoft has been leading, innovating and driving a very comprehensive global programme... We're building momentum and we're on a scale that no other consumer electronics company or entertainment company has been able to achieve in nine years. It's been a very good show and I'm very pleased with what we've been able to accomplish. I think there was a lot of good work, a lot of innovation and a lot of news from us.

Oh, Don.

Mattrick: Rivals have been slacking off [MCVUK]

See Brian try to talk the head of Sega of America into launching Dreamcast 2 to take on the Wii.
Dreamcast 2? Seaman 2? Shenmue 3? Hear Simon Jeffery crush all of your Sega wet dreams.

We explained it in detail, why Aliens didn't make E3. But it's so much more soothing hearing the news come in the Anglified voice of SEGA of America's head honcho Simon Jeffery.

Still The Sims, now with a shiny 3 after it. If you're interested in all things Simlish then you probably want to take a gander at the offical E3 Sims 3 trailer, sent over to our tower fresh this morning. What does this have, Sim faithful, that would make me want to drop whatever other Sims game I happen to be currently playing?