The results are in for the 2011 Game Critics Awards: Best of E3, and the big winners this year (according to games journalists for various publications) are BioShock Infinite, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and Sound Shapes.

Irrational Games' next BioShock game won four awards including Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Action/Adventure Game.

Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim picked up two awards - Best Console Game and Best role Playing Game, while Battlefield 3 picked up awards for Best Action Game, and Best Online Multiplayer. Finally, Queasy Games' Sound Shapes won Best Handheld Game and Best Social/Casual Game. The full list of winners can be found below:

Perhaps stripping the navigation out of its E3 demo for the Kinect-only Fable title, Fable The Journey. was a terrible idea.. In retrospect, Lionhead Studios boss Peter Molyneux thinks they should have left the navigational features of the game in the demo. Because it was stripped to keep a tighter control on the presentation, many media types and viewers believed the game to be an "on rails shooter."

This, Molyneux has claimed in multiple interviews this week, is not the truth, but he blames himself for that perception. Speaking to OXM after his part in the Microsoft E3 briefing, Molyneux actually apologized for the game's debut, calling the whole thing a "horrendous mistake."

"I made a horrendous mistake on the press demo on taking out the navigation allowing players to move," he stated. "I'll state on record now that Fable: The Journey is definitely not on rails."

Epic Games design director and developer lead on the Gears of War series Cliff Bleszinski says that the video game industry needs to embrace the hacking community for a number of reasons. In an E3 interview with GameTrailers.com to promote Gears of War 3, Bleszinski said that it was a chance for companies to foster more homegrown, user-generated content.

"I was on a panel with Kudo (Tsunodo, Kinect creative director), and we were talking about Kinect Fun Labs, and he was saying they’re embracing a lot of the homebrew and hacker stuff that’s going on with Kinect," said Bleszinski.

"Generally speaking when it comes to hackers, you want to embrace a lot of what they are doing instead of fighting it. I think the industry is slowly learning that," he added.

One of the benefits Blezinski didn't mention is using hackers to highlight or locate security holes in various online systems. Many are more than happy to oblige.

CraveOnline and NOS Energy Drink announced today that four of its team members have broken the Guinness World Record for "longest video games marathon playing a fighting game" by playing 32 hours of Mortal Kombat. The record breaking team featured Cristopher Bryant, Paul Chillino, Melissa Estuesta, and Lance Moose. The team shattered the record at the CraveOnline Non-Stop NOS Gaming Lounge outside of the Los Angeles Convention Center during the E3 Expo. Guinness World Record officials were on hand to monitor the team and present them with an official certificate announcing the breaking of the world record.

In order to break the previous record, the gamers had to play a total of 31 hours straight. They were each allowed ten minute breaks every hour.

Nintendo has suffered its second substantial drop in its stock price just days after its E3 press conference where it announced the Wii U console and controller. On Wednesday the company saw a 5.7 drop in its stock price and today it dipped an additional 5.2 percent (as of this writing). The consecutive declines for the Japanese console maker came after the company announced its new console, but the exact cause is up for interpretation, according to one Japanese financial analyst.

According to Mitsushige Akino, a chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management, the decline has more to do with a perceived shift in the broader videogame universe.

"The product itself is not bad–market expectations had been far too high," Akino told the Wall Street Journal. "..it is also a reflection of structural issues caused by a transformation within the market."

It's kind of a funny story, though it might be more folklore than fact; Computer & Video Games has a report about a personal assistant to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick trying to get him in to see Battlefield 3 behind closed doors. As you can imagine, EA said no to the request.

According to the C&VG report (citing "a senior informant who witnessed the exchange first-hand") Bobby Kotick's personal assistant discussed the chances of a hands-on trial of the game with EA reps at the door of the publisher's private meeting room. The female assistant jumped to the front of the line on Wednesday morning to request a personal showing of the game for Kotick. After mulling it over inside the private meeting room, an EA representative declined the request, saying that "it would not be possible."

The PA put up a small fight in front of those waiting to get in and then left in a huff, according to the witness.

Microsoft's Larry Hryb offers some new details on Microsoft's Cloud Storage solution for the Xbox 360 on his official blog. Coming "later this year," the cloud-based storage solution will allow Xbox Live members to store game saves and their Live profiles. From the blog post:

The Entertainment Software Association released its annual report on the state of video game play in North America today at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. According to the ESA research, 72 percent of American households play video games with 82 percent of those who play being adults. The "2011 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry" report also found that 42 percent of gamers are women and that women age 18 or older represent more than one-third of the game-playing population.

In addition, purchases of digital full games, digital add-on content, mobile apps, subscriptions and social network gaming accounted for 24 percent of game sales in 2010, generating right around $5.9 billion in revenue.