E3 news coverage grows at a seemingly exponential rate each year but much of it amounts to little more than regurgitated press releases. At this point there’s only a few sources I’d personally recommend. On Twitter I’ll follow analysis by Giant Bomb’s Patrick Klepek (level headed, great reporting depth) and Polygon’s Arthur Gies (highly opinionated). I’m counting on stellar video reports and recaps on Giant Bomb.
For more traditional gaming news I’m giving Polygon a try this year. I really dig the Verge style “story stream” – a bunch of related articles are thrown together in a single thread – and their heavy usage of full bleed, high resolution imagery. I have high hopes but it is their first year; if their coverage starts to lag I’ll jump to Joystiq, a mainstay of previous years.
For live blogs of the big pre-E3 press conferences (EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) I’m going to start with Ars Technica. Ars has a no-nonsense, “just the facts” house style that should suit the play by play well.
Note that all of this news source speculation may be overkill: according to many experts this year’s E3 won’t generate huge news. The assumption is we’re a year before Microsoft and Sony release their next game console iterations. That translates into conservative behavior by game studios as they tackle the programming hurdles necessary for next-gen hardware. But who’s to say there won’t be some surprises?