Mark Rein is never one to keep his mouth shut. Sometimes he has no filter between his brain and his mouth, which is great for his line of work. Gamers want to hear the truth, not some sugar-coated PR spin.

In an interview with CVG, Rein said it wasn’t a smart move for Microsoft and Bungie to show a tiny bit of the Halo 3 single player campaign that this year’s E3.

“I think that [showing the single-player campaign] hurt Halo 3 at E3″, Rein told us when we caught up with him for a chat this week. “Halo 3 didn’t win any game of the show awards that I could see. Well, because they didn’t have to show Halo. There was no need”.

“I’m sure if they’d actually had a big Halo 3 presence, if Microsoft had set up eight machines or 12 or 16 machines so you could sit and play it, it would have won all kinds of awards. But they don’t need to because, like me, everyone’s already placed their order… So I think that worked against them at E3,” the Epic boss added.

I somewhat agree with him. I honestly expected more from Halo 3 and was disappointed that all we got was a simple little trailer, given the amount of time between E3 and the release. A single player demo or even a more refined multiplayer demo at E3 would have been better. But hey, everyone is going to buy it anyway. Microsoft knows they’re going to sell millions of copies of this game, so why push it and show anything more than is absolutely needed?

Way back in the day at E3 2007 (yeah, I know it wasn’t that long ago), Sony announced a partnership with NCSoft to bring their MMO expertise to the PS3 and PSP. Today, NCSoft games some of the details on how they expect to accomplish that in a discussion with CVG.

“We haven’t announced any of the titles we might be bringing out, but whatever we bring out, the one thing I can tell you is that, even if they’re some intellectual property we already have, they’ll be things that’ll be very carefully created for the console experience, not merely a straight port”, NCSoft exec producer Richard Garriott told us when we caught up with him at this week’s Develop conference in Brighton.

“We found even back in my Origin days that direct, unadulterated ports weren’t very successful compared to games that you make sure are really crafted correctly for the console experience”, he added.

I’m glad they aren’t going to just throw ports of City of Heroes and such. Richard Garriott is right on the money: gamers would rather have a customized version to make proper use of the PS3 instead of a straight port of the PC versions of their games. Either way, I think NCSoft will do a great job in bolstering the MMO community on game consoles.

It was previously reported as UFC 2007 in all trailers and materials, which hinted at a release this year.

Now, GameTrailers has re-posted the E3 trailer we saw last week, this time calling it “UFC 2009″. I can only pray we don’t have to wait over a year for this game. THQ should have had ample time to develop this game to this level for a release this year.

I needs my MMA gaming………..

During E3 Microsoft Void Star Creations announced announced another title in their Xbox Live Arcade lineup, Poker Smash. Poker Sash is to be another puzzle game that will be available by the holidays and boasts having:

Innovative gameplay allows players to experience six unique game modes including action, puzzle, practice, theme playlist, split screen head-to-head and multiplayer tournaments.

I like the ever expanding lineup on the Arcade and think this spin on Poker and puzzles may prove to be interesting, we will keep our eyes peeled for more on this one.

So it is confirmed that Peter Moore has decided to step down from the MS crew after joining in 2003. He decided to go over to EA and head up their EA sports camp and make some big bucks, $550 K plus bonuses. (not bad) In Moore’s place steps in Don Mattick a former EA president. Looks like EA and MS had a wifeswap, let’s see how it pans out for the two units.

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Don Mattrick, a former president at Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), will lead the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), which includes overseeing the Xbox and Games for Windows businesses. Peter Moore, who currently serves as corporate vice president of IEB, has decided to move his family back to the Bay Area for personal reasons and has secured another opportunity in the video games industry.

I wonder if this had something to do with his Moore’s horrible singing during the Xbox/Microsoft E3 conference?

We watched and watched, made a sandwich, then watched some more before dropping our knowledge on the big 3’s conferences at E3. Trying to avoid the fervor and jumping the gun, we really wanted to give our readers a well rounded commentary instead of rushing a half assed editorial. Ebert once said that you need to watch a movie twice before reviewing it properly and thats what we strove for.

Click here for Sony.

Click here for Nintendo.

Click here for Microsoft.

Let us know what you guys think. Only you can prevent forest fires.

Fracture, LucasArts action-packed new title, peaked my interest after watching some interesting videos from E3. Fracture is an interesting story of the US divided, but more importantly packs in some new gameplay elements, namely the grenades and their powers. Certain grenades can be used to lower and rise the terrain of the map, this is pretty useful as you will need to use these to move around certain parts of the map and can also use the changes of elevation to create cover from enemy fire. I think this is also nice to see that developers are pushing the envelope of what the next generation hardware can do. Chek it out.

We brought you the first 2 parts of the Crysis developer walkthrough from E3, now we bring you part 3. It’s too bad I only use a laptop these days, because there’s no way my Dell laptop (or coming Macbook Pro) will run this thing very well.

Here’s your HD lovin.

Here’s another two part developer walkthrough, this time for the PlayStation Network title Little Big Planet. This creative title should spark a lot of user generated content and provide a lot of depth to go back and replay the game with new shared levels.

Here’s your HD lovin.

Hit the jump for more…

Want to know what kind of combat units you’re getting in the new iteration of Starcraft? Chris Sigaty, Lead Producer on Starcraft 2, had a chance at E3 to do an interview on the topic. You get to hear about some of the combat units and how they can level up. Enjoy.