So GP is at the Nintendo press briefing right now. It starts in about five minutes.

I got here early, about 8:05. Ran into Nintendo exec George Harrison, chatted, found out he is originally from nearby the GP homestead in Bucks County, PA. Nice guy...

Bumped into Chris Grant and Ross Miller from Joystiq, Shawn Sines from the Columbus Dispatch/Filefront and Curt Feldman, late of GameSpot and soon to announce something new. Sounds exciting. Curt's a pro...

While I wait for the show to start, I'll share a little E3 gossip: ECA prez Hal Halpin was seen having lunch yesterday with new ESA boss Mike Gallagher in the grill at the Fairmont Miramar, E3 2007 HQ. They spent about two hours together and seemed to get on very well.

Okay - Reggie is now onstage, touting the broad appeal of games:

Even Peter Moore seemed subdued.

When, near the end of Microsoft's E3 press briefing the normally irrepressible pitchman uveiled a special-edition olive green Halo 3 Xbox 360, the crowd hardly reacted. Perhaps sensing this, Moore quickly stashed the console - for which no price was mentioned - and moved on to some Halo 3 video clips.

From where GP sat, it was like that all night long - a press conference overly long on details, short on new information and lacking the hoped-for price cuts on 360 hardware.

The night started strong in the outdoor ampitheatre at Santa Monica High, as a five-piece band described as Halo fans played some stirring music from the game series. The woman soloing on the violin was especially good.

But it was all downhill from there - nothing unexpected, nothing exciting. Perhaps it was the smaller, more professional media crowd which lacked the usual enthusiasm of past E3 events packed with fanboys. Maybe it was residual gloom over the 360's ongoing hardware troubles, which have the potential to move from problem to scandal status in the near future.

In any case, not a good showing by Microsoft.

GP is wheels-down in Santa Monica, typing this from my hotel room (over broadband wireless, which I highly recommend over those often unreliable hotel wi-fi networks).

Anyway, since this is E3 week, things will be slightly different on GamePolitics.

GP expects to do some live-blogging of events and maybe dish about some of the E3 nightlife. As far as game news, there's no way we can - or should - compete with bigger outlets on those kind of announcements, so we'll stick to passing along the flavor of E3.

A portion of our show coverage will be channeled through short bursts on Twitter, so be sure to sign up there and add GamePolitics as a friend. And watch our Twitter channel as it updates in the right sidebar!

Entertainment Consumers Association prez Hal Halpin and his ECA headquarters crew are also here at the show. 

And despite all of the E3 craziness, we'll still have the kind of hard news coverage that you look for on GamePolitics.

GP's Tuesday Schedule:

??? - head over to the Fairmont Miramar and pick up E3 badge

5:30 - ESA reception, Fairmont Miramar

8:30 - Microsoft Media Briefing, Santa Monica High School (this is kind of a cool location, plus it is right behind my hotel - an easy walk)

9:30 - Sony Killzone 2 party (invitation-only) Sushi Roku, Santa Monica (I'd like to check this out if I can get my story done for the Philly Inquirer in time; deadline is Wed. morning)

We note this morning that Joystiq (where GP pens The Political Game column) has gotten an extreme makeover.

Looks good from here. What do you think?

E3 will certainly be different this year. But will it be better?

GameSpot has interviews with a number of companies who aren't attending for a variety of reasons.

Most notably, Tecmo boss John Inada was highly critical of the new E3:

New show management didn't seem to know what they were doing. I don't have money to waste on an experimental project. Previously, we were not treated very nicely by the old E3 management, so we didn't feel obligated to cooperate this year. I also heard that a lot of the [retail] buyers weren't coming.

A unnamed source described as close to a large, non-attending publisher also cited concerns over flagging retailer participation:

GameStop's not really going to be there, Best Buy's not going to be there. Why should we bother dealing with the ESA's confusion when we can meet with our retail partners separately and then stage our own gamers' day event later on in the year where we set the rules? It just doesn't make any sense.