Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with a roundup of today’s E3 news pending hearing from our merry fellowship heading to the Sony Press briefing.

Yes I realize it’s all from GameSpot, but this is just a placeholder till Sherveen comes in with everything ELSE that he’s got, and I’ve been a bit locked up with a son home sick.

In all seriousness we got:

Item One: Yuji Naka starts own studio.

Item Two: Wii COD3, PS3 Spidey, 360 Tony Hawk on Activision’s E3 plate.

Item Three: Zelda Wii sword fighting, next-gen WarioWare confirmed.

Item Four:  Square Enix announces trio of Final Fantasy games

Item Five: Virtua Fighter 5 to beat on PS3 exclusively.

Stories and snarky commentary after the jump.

Item One: Yuji Naka starts own studio.

Longtime Sega developer Yuji Naka is leaving the company, the publisher announced today. On June 1, he will step down as Sega's creative officer for research and development and become the CEO and president of a new development company, Prope, Ltd.

The move is part of Sega's Game Creator Independence Program, which seeks "to promote entrepreneurial business spin-offs with its internal development talent." Sega "will make a 10 percent investment in Prope, Ltd." and will have exclusive global publishing rights to all its games.

"We named our company Prope in the hopes of bringing game entertainment much closer to users, establishing closer ties between users and us, and creating near future entertainment," Naka said of the move. "Prope" is a Latin preposition which means "nearby," "beside," or "near."

Well good for Yuji Naka.  Though this studio owned Independent studio thing was tried by Hollywood, and I don’t believe that worked too well either.

Anyway, good for him, hopefully we’ll see something nice now that he doesn’t have people to tell him no.  Well except for the bosses at Sega still.  

Item Two: Wii COD3, PS3 Spidey, 360 Tony Hawk on Activision’s E3 plate.

The floodgates have opened. Today, Activision revealed its upcoming lineup for next-gen systems, and no console is being ignored. The second largest third-party publisher (behind Electronic Arts) is bringing its most popular franchises and licenses to all three next-generation systems--Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Nintendo's Wii.

As confirmed in the company's earnings call last week, Call of Duty 3 is coming out this fall, and it won't be headed to the PC, where the franchise started. COD3 will be released for all next-gen systems, as well as the Xbox and PlayStation 2. As of this morning, a developer was not yet mentioned, but speculation has it that it won't be Infinity Ward and will likely be Treyarch, the team that built Call of Duty: Big Red One for current-gen systems. COD3 will be set during the "Normandy Breakout," when the Allied Forces liberated Paris.

The name of Tony Hawk's newest adventure was also officially revealed today. Tony Hawk's Project 8, the game that CEO Bobby Kotick referred to as a "traditional" Tony Hawk release, ollies onto the Xbox 360, PS3, PlayStation Portable, PS2, and Xbox this fall.

A floodgate of sequels, can’t wait.

/SARCASM

Seriously though, there’s some original items coming, the RPG Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will come to ALL systems at the end of year.

That has my excite-o-glands very happy!

Item Three: Zelda Wii sword fighting, next-gen WarioWare confirmed.

At its press conference on Tuesday, Nintendo will officially unveil its next-generation console, the Wii. It is expected that executives will demonstrate the console's full set of functionalities, which is known to include the now-famous "nunchaku" motion-sensing controller. The company will also likely reveal the official titles of previously announced first-party games, such as Super Smash Bros. and Metroid Prime 3, as well as possibly revealing some new Wii titles.

Today, though, some of Nintendo's press-conference thunder was stolen when the first copies of Time arrived on newsstands. The May 15 issue of the magazine has a lengthy article on the Wii, titled "A Game for All Ages," by technology correspondent Lev Grossman.

Grossman traveled to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto, Japan and was shown the Wii by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. The reporter was especially impressed with the Wii's controller. "It's part laser pointer and part motion sensor, so it knows where you're aiming it, when and how fast you move it, and how far it is from the TV screen," he said. "There's a strong whiff of voodoo about it."

More importantly for Nintendo fans, the Time article revealed several key pieces of information about Wii games. First, Grossman described playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. "Now I'm Errol Flynn, sword fighting with the controller, then aiming a bow and arrow, then using it as a fishing rod, reeling in a stubborn virtual fish," he said. While Nintendo confirmed the much-anticipated GameCube title would have some Wii functionality, this is the first official description of what that functionality is.

Time also revealed the existence of not one, but two previously unknown Wii games. First up was the first next-generation installment in the popular WarioWare series. While he didn't give a title for the game, Grossman did describe its gameplay in detail. "In one hot minute, I use the controller to swat a fly, do squat-thrusts as a weight lifter, turn a key in a lock, catch a fish, drive a car, sauté some vegetables, balance a broom on my outstretched hand, color in a circle, and fence with a foil," said Grossman. "And yes, dance the hula."

“Dance the hula.”

Holy fracking shit, I don’t know what the hell to make of that one.  I shake my hips and California has an earthquake, can you imagine a bunch of Doritos addicted gamers doing this at the same time??

The horror.

Ok, but seriously, we know for sure Twilight Princess now has Wii controller capabilities, we know there’s a WariorWare and a new Zelda coming just for the Wii.

And this is BEFORE the press conference tomorrow.

I mean, this is cool and all, and a Wii is on my list of things to get, but boy oh boy there just DOESN’T seem to be ANY surprises remaining for tomorrow!

I hope I’m wrong.

Item Four:  Square Enix announces trio of Final Fantasy games

Kicking off a week of potentially explosive gaming announcements is Square Enix's annual pre-E3 press conference, being held this morning at LA's Palladium event venue. With new consoles due out this fall from Sony and Nintendo (and the Xbox 360 already plowing ahead at full steam), excitement here is understandably high about new products the titanic Japanese publisher may announce for next-generation platforms.

A throng of eager journalists assembled outside the Palladium prior to the event. Surprisingly, Metal Gear Solid designer Hideo Kojima made an appearance, eschewing the spotlight and sitting among the regular audience.

Look the bottom line is: Final Fantasy XII this October, Final Fantasy XIII appears to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

Oh Dragon Quest is on the Wii and it appears to be a launch title.  There’s some DS stuff but other than, really it’s all about Japanese consoles.  

So, yeah, that’s about it.  Oh but wait! The Xbox 360 bash fest continues!

Item Five: Virtua Fighter 5 to beat on PS3 exclusively.

Last August, Sega announced it was preparing a sequel to Virtua Fighter 4, appropriately titled Virtua Fighter 5. The game was being developed for Sega's new Lindbergh arcade board, which is based on a 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU. The fact the board was based on PC architecture led some to speculate the game would be coming to the Xbox 360, as the porting process would be less complex than that to other consoles.

Today, Sega announced that Virtua Fighter 5 is indeed coming to a next-generation console...but not the Xbox 360. The game will be exclusive to the PlayStation 3 when it is released in North America in Spring 2007. Like the 360, though, the game will feature high-definition graphics and will support 720p resolution.

Virtua Fighter 5 will sport more than 15 characters, including many from previous installments. Also, it will include two new characters, Eileen and El Blaze. Of Chinese descent, Eileen "uses a monkey kung-fu fighting style that she learned from her grandfather, a former kung-fu master," according to Sega. As one might gather from the name, El Blaze is a master of lucha libre, the flamboyant style of Mexican wrestling.

Did the new president of Sega hate Peter Moore when he worked there?  Cause seriously, this recent bout of Sega hating on Xbox 360 is pretty scary if you ask me.  First they pull “Full Auto” to the PS3, now Virtua gets no 360 love?  

I guess selling less Xbox 360’s in your first month, then the original Xbox sold in a week does that to company confidence.  Some had speculated that Sega would give more love to Microsoft’s machine because of the beating Sony gave them over the Dreamcast.  But there’s no such thing as revenge when it goes against the bottom line, and it appears to me that with Square and Sega plopping their development butts firmly in Sony’s camp, that they feel they are going to dominate once again.

We’ll see folks.  The Sony press conference is very soon, this year Microsoft goes last.

E3 is here!

Semper Fi!