IDG Entertainment is running into a little trouble crafting "a follow-up to the now-defunct E3 Expo." Firing Squad is reporting that Sony Computer Entertainment will not be attending the upcoming E For All Expo.

Along with the major console maker, publishers NCSoft, Sega and Capcom will also be missing the October show, according to FiringSquad. The show won't be a total bust, though: Nintendo and EA will be there, along with THQ, Konami, Namco, Intel and NVIDIA.

These losses are a pretty major blow as the new show tries to become a must-attend event. Any show that's going to replace E3 is going to have to quickly build up to a critical mass of publisher attention to draw in the press and consumer interest that makes an expo work.

In an interview with AMN during E3, Ninja Theory co-founder Tam Antoniades said that Heavenly Sword is being planned as a trilogy and that the story of part two has been written.

"When we set out to do Heavenly Sword ... we wanted it to be a three-game story," he said at around the 11-minute mark. "We've had the story for the sequel for awhile now. Hopefully if this game is successful, then there's no reason why there shouldn't be a sequel and we'd very much like to go into that."

Given the hype for the title and our impressions playing it, Heavenly Sword is very likely poised to be one of the standout PlayStation 3 titles this holiday season. Just don't be surprised if you defeat the final boss and receive a cliffhanger ending.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

After an odd E3 in Santa Monica, the show's apparently picking up stakes again. UK trade publication MCV says that E3 will be moving next year. No, it's not particularly earth-shattering news, considering that the ESA circulated a survey asking where they should move the thing to, but it's nice to see that the group recognizes that Santa Monica wasn't the perfect place for the event. We've contacted the ESA for further comment, we'll let you know if we hear something back.

Pending an upcoming review of the event, the date and format are subject to change too. With a dramatic scale back and a new man at the top of the organization, E3 in flux should probably be considered the rule rather than the exception for the time being.

Update: We heard back from the ESA, but they're not commenting at the moment. Also, thanks to Fernando Rocker for the jazzy new pic!

We'd be lying if we said Too Human's absence from the "everything this year" Microsoft press conference wasn't noticed. Especially considering Too Human is still theoretically supposed to come out this year. How many times must Denis Dyack and the team at Silicon Knights have lemon juice poured into their papercut wounds caused by the stammering flipbook presentation of Too Human at E3 2006? Well, until we play a version of Too Human that doesn't look like a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monster (and if Harryhausen had computers we couldn't even say that). With Halo 3 and Mass Effect already slated for this holiday season, we're already feeling like we'll be stuffed with sci-fi epics -- so will Too Human make it on the plate?

Dyack tells GameDaily, "We made the decision not to show Too Human at the press conference some time ago. The reason for this decision was that we have another event planned in the future for Too Human that we thought would be more appropriate ... Not attending the show and setting appointments with the press was due to Silicon Knights being extremely busy finalizing the game and we simply could not spare the time." Microsoft, who is publishing the game, apparently didn't want to comment on the story. Too Human did show off some in-game engine footage recently, but for a game that is supposedly still coming out this year -- and was already expected last year -- we've heard next to nothing about it.

Update: We got an email from Eurogamer letting us know that during an interview they did last week the soon-to-be dearly departed Peter Moore said Too Human would be shown in 2008. The wording of the quote doesn't help explain if Moore is saying Too Human will be out in 2008 or just shown at next year's E3 -- whenever and whatever that might be.

Information on new Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher has been slim -- very slim. The new lead of the industry's lobbying group has been more behind-the-scenes compared to predecessor Doug Lowenstein. Gallagher hasn't taken the training wheels off yet with his new job and didn't even bother having the annual opening speech kicking off E3 like Lowenstein would have. This was always an opportunity to hear what was going on with the industry and the ESA, hear Lowenstein's thoughts and afterward he'd be open to questions. An interview with GameDaily, which relates an unabridged version of Gallagher compared to his NY Times piece, gives a little insight into why the shift -- whether intentional or not, Gallagher comes off as a hired gun more than a man invested in the industry -- it's all politics. But maybe that's the point.

Gallagher says his early experience so far is like "taking a drink of water from a fire hose." The interview sounds like he's still going through a learning curve and grasping the basics of the industry, depending on staff (one of whom is ready to leave) and asking former ESA pres. Doug Lowenstein for advice. He says he's been meeting with politicians on Capital Hill, "I'm drawing a much deeper picture of what the policymakers' view of our industry is and that's important because that's one of the key audiences that we need to impact at ESA ... understanding 'where are they right now?' and 'how do we move them to where they're meeting the goal of creating a positive policy environment for the growth of video games?'" Maybe it is best that Gallagher learns what he's doing before coming out. We're quite aware of the ESA doing many things behind the scenes in regards to recent issues and scandals, but it's still not clear if that's through Gallagher's leadership or the trained staff Lowenstein left behind.

Dungeon Hero's title is supposed to be a bit ironic. See, the thing in Dungeon Hero is that you're a a human, but you're not actually good, and the dungeon isn't bad. Through a fantastic opening sequence (found after the break) you'll get the premise of what's going on. A dungeon is just another home with various types of creatures trying to live their lives. Although the set-up sounds like developer Firefly is making Stronghold for the Dungeon Keeper fans, it's actually an action RPG title.

The game won't be released until Q1 of 2009 so there is still a long journey to go before we can accurately say anything about this game. The premise is that the dungeon is at war, it's not a place where gold is just laying around and enemies aren't just hanging around for the adventurer to show up. The idea is to twist the conventions of dungeon games like Diablo which have become the norm. Players will level up and choose different easily deployable combat moves, kind of like what Molyneux is talking about for the upcoming Fable 2. The developers have hired an artist to tell the story through Max Payne style cutscenes, but with animation added. If Dungeon Hero keeps its sense of irony, heaps on some solid gameplay, we'll definitely be looking forward to it, despite it sounding originally like another dungeon crawl game. The only thing Dungeon Hero has to worry about is becoming the thing it is struggling against becoming -- the path which the remake of The Bard's Tale stumbled into.

We like it when a developer is straight-up with us about their game. The developers from Auran, who are working on the MMO Fury, were quite honest in saying, "It's WoW battlegrounds meets Guild Wars, with a bit of Unreal and Battlefield tossed in." This got our attention and the straight-talk express continued through the hands-on.

Fury definitely has the Guild Wars look to it, but the gameplay is more Unreal with an intuitive WoW interface. The pace is like an FPS when in an arena battle, the only difference is that instead of just blasting the ever-living bajingus out of your opponent, you'll build up fury and unleash with special attacks, magic and you can always retreat and heal. Playing against three developers meant we didn't stand a chance and had absolutely no idea how to counter various moves -- but unlike an FPS against professionals, we could at least semi-grasp what was going on. Fury is definitely mental twitch play where if you used the right skills it's possible for a battle to last. If you had a basic grasp on what you're doing, it won't feel like a run-of-the-mill FPS where whoever has the most shields wins.

The game releases Oct 9 and the original beta was postponed to later this month. We'll have the release about the beta next week to let y'all know about the exact date. The game is graphically on par with today's expectations and PvP players will probably enjoy it because that's clearly the game's focus. From our short time with Fury, developer Auran has done a good job. There are so many other elements to Fury, (it is an MMO after all) like realms compete against each other for the benefit of the entire server and there are numerous game types to do battle. Fury probably won't defeat the big MMOs out there because that's not what it's designed to do. The game is looking to give a solid PvP experience in an MMO environment, with a dash FPS elements -- to that end it succeeds. For MMO players who mostly play PvP it would definitely be worth checking out the beta later this month.

One of the biggest complaints we heard from people while talking at the E3 summit was the new format. Though the smaller size was beneficial to playing the games and talking to developers, the hotel suites (and particularly Barker Hanger) were too spread out and we lost hours of productivity each day taking shuttles from one locale to the next.

Today we received an attendee survey asking for our thoughts on how E3 was handled this year. A few questions in particular caught our eye:

• Of the following options, in what city would you most like to see the next Summit held? (Options include Santa Monica, San Diego, Laguna Beach, San Francisco, Los Angeles)
• Do you prefer to see the Summit held in a multiple hotel setting like it was this year, or in a convention-center type/larger facility setting?
• Of the following options, in which month would you most like to see the next Summit take place? (Options include May through August)
• If you didn't visit Barker Hangar (or Fairmont Hotel), why not?
  

The previously-mentioned Barker Hanger and Fairmont Hotel were the farthest away from the cluster of close by hotels where events were taken place; it should also be noted that Fairmont was the only place with a press center and reliable WiFi. While this writer may be in the minority for wanting the conference to return to his hometown in Atlanta, Georgia, we're pretty sure most would agree that whatever option will reduce travel time would be optimal.

The funniest part of the GameDaily.biz interview with Peter Moore is that he knows the Xbox is biting the big one in Japan, but he points out that Sony "crumbling" in Japan against the Wii is just more delicious. Moore says he planned for an uphill battle in Japan -- actually it's more like a flat-faced vertical mountain battle, having only sold 122, 565 Xbox 360s this year -- but he believes Sony never expected to fail in Japan like they have.

Moore points out that Sony keeps talking about this 10-year plan without ever explaining what that means. He says, "I'm not sure what their 10-year plan is ... It's like they just said, 'We have a 10-year plan' [and that's it]." Moore isn't talking 10-year plans but he expects the Xbox to live longer than the original's four years. He says Sony can have all the plans they like, but the key is getting to the "mass market with price points [that matter]," which Moore says Microsoft is a lot closer to being able to do. Yes, that certainly sounds like allusion to an incoming price drop.

Legendary: The Box is quite possibly the worst name given to a game with a massive amount of potential. They could have called it Pandora and used one perfect word to describe this first-person shooter in a nutshell -- but they didn't. Thankfully, developer Spark has till Spring of 2008 to change the name. Pandora Legendary: The Box starts with a thief being hired to break into a museum to steal a box. Oops, turns out it's Pandora's box which the thief accidentally activates and all hell breaks loose -- literally. In an incredibly intense scene reminiscent of a Call of Duty or Medal of Honor sequence (coincidentally that's what the developers from Spark worked on previously), the world just plunges into chaos. You'll watch the whole thing happen in real time. From the moment the box is opened you'll attempt to escape the crumbling museum, avoid the griffins, try your best to soak in the insanity that ensues around you, and run away from a golem created from cars and building parts. If your character stops, he'll die.

A later piece of the game takes place in an English cathedral infested with werewolves. Yes, the developers are quite aware the issue there and are looking to tweak it. The controls are your standard FPS stuff and the weapons we saw are based on modern weaponry. You get ammo off the fallen soldiers belonging to the private army of the man who hired you to "steal" the box. Also, the box infuses you with the power to suck life force from fallen beasts to recover health. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 and considering we're still a little under a year from seeing the final product, the game is already looking fantastic. The developers say where they invested time was in enemy recognition of objects and surroundings so that the experience is never the same twice. The werewolves don't take the same path to a target every time and they'll crawl walls, drop from the ceiling, jump over boxes and the only way they'll stay dead is by shooting off their heads.

The developers also said that multiplayer will be different, utilizing the creatures into various multiplayer types. Humans vs. creatures already sounds like a good and obvious multiplayer experience. We're excited to see more of this game as it comes along. It's still way too early to tell if the game will be any type of good, but a game that utilizes Call of Duty intensity with a modern tale of Pandora's box sounds very cool. Now somebody please change the name of this game to accurately convey how great this title could be when it releases.

Mushroom Men is still many moons away from being done and what we saw was mostly still concept art. There was some in-game footage to show the game is real, but it was a video and not a demo. The thing is that developers Red Fly are on a path at the moment, but where that path leads is anyone's guess. Mushroom Men will release as a 3D platformer on the Wii in the fall of 2008 and as a 2D platformer on DS in spring of 2008 (there were no images of the DS version). The concept of Mushroom Men is that a comet has passed over the planet and the dust left behind has given consciousness to the fungus. The Mushroom Men evolved and are now at war with other fungus, all of this isn't noticed by the humans.

One of the interesting concepts that we couldn't see implemented is the "Scav" system, short for scavenger. You'll collect trash and put it together to form weaponry. For the Wii version they're still working on eight different control schemes and attempting at all costs to have players do battle without feeling like they are doing battle through "waggle." There is a chance for an Xbox and/or PS3 version of the game if it does well on the Wii. The high-res models they showed of the characters in their video clearly can not be done on the Wii and will need to be scaled back. In an interesting aside, the reason the game is being designed for Wii and DS is due to the install base and the fact that it costs half as much as if they were developing it for the more powerful systems. This reasoning may rear its head by many independent developers who just can't afford the $20 million price tags surrounding full featured Xbox and PS3 games.

There's really not much we can say about Mushroom Men. Conceptually it sounds fine, beyond that there wasn't much to show of the game. From the artist concept drawings though we hope the game does do well so we can see the beauty of this title come through on the Xbox 360 and PS3. We also look forward to seeing how the game comes across on the Nintendo DS soon, especially considering spring is only 9 months away -- start incubating those spores now!

Will Ubisoft's My Word Coach, a more linguistically-oriented Brain Age, find an audience? We hope so; as edugaming titles go, this was certainly one of the more enjoyable entries.

The differences between the DS and Wii versions are minimal: the DS has two extra "recreational" games, whereas five of Wii's minigames support multiplayer (the DS only has two). There are six "core" (i.e. education-centric) games of three difficulty levels apiece. The recreational games are also beneficial, as exposure to words helps retention, according to senior designer Peter Yang.

The first thing to came to our minds when we saw Commanders: Attack! is Nintendo's turn-based strategy series Advance Wars. It's not a bad comparison, but it does give you an accurate description of how the game is played: two sides taking turns, moving troops, capturing buildings and entering attack / counter-attack combat with other troops.

Where it differs from the game, most obviously, is the high-definition visuals. Also, while each Commanding Officer has special stat bonuses and abilities, troops cannot enjoy the bonus unless they are within the officer's sphere of influence. The art style of the troops is inspired by what people in the 1930s thought the future might look like.

A fog of war is set for all maps. All in all, there are 15 campaign missions and six maps for the four-player multiplayer modes. Alongside the currently-available Band of Bugs, it's good to see quality strategy titles invade the Xbox Live Arcade. Commanders: Attack! is due out by the end of this year for both the XBLA and the PC.

It's the age-old story of a ball trying to find its home, retold in high-definition visuals for the Xbox 360 and PC. Our two-level demo for Switchball had us traversing over wooden planks, building bridges out of crates, and plowing into metal boxes with our metalball upgrade. It's a simple "get from point A to point B" title with simple controls but still a fun, casual game.

What impressed us most is the physics of the game, particularly in one area where we had to roll on a hanging piece of cloth. There are six levels spanning five worlds, for a total of 30. We were told there will be multiplayer options for up to 8 players, both co-op and competitive modes. Switchball is already out on PC and due out in August for Xbox Live Arcade.

Don't expect deep gameplay with this title based on the popular science fiction series. Battlestar Galactica, for Xbox Live Arcade and PC, is 3D space shooter played on a 2D plane. The controls are quick to grasp -- turning, shooting, activating shields and locking on for missiles -- although we had a bit of trouble initially with chasing enemies.

We only had a chance to try out a couple of levels. There are four ships to choose from each side, humans and Cylons, each with various offensive, defensive and speed ratings. Death triggers a respawn, and the only penalty is lost time (beating levels is generally dependent upon time).

There are 10 single-player missions based on battles from the show. Multiplayer has its own set of ten maps and two gameplay types: deathmatch and domination, where you capture turrets that destroy the opponent's base ship.

According to producer Connie Brammeier, the game is intended for mass appeal. We get the feeling that hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans are going to be disappointed by the lack of depth in the title. The game is expected out in the third quarter of this year.