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E3's experimental move to Santa Monica last year cost the ESA $5 million after breaking its contract with the LA Convention Center. Kotaku obtained IRS documents showing that the contract's end and an expected drop in E3 revenue, due to the event's smaller size, caused the association to dramatically increase membership fees.

Kotaku speculates that the increase, as well as the decision to hold E3 in Santa Monica, may have been the reasons LucasArts and Activision/Vivendi jumped ship from the ESA. The ESA says membership dues were lower in the past because of income generated by E3, but revenues dropped significantly when the ESA board (made up of executives from publishers) moved the venue last year.

Not only was Santa Monica's E3 bad due to its invite-only policy (meaning publishers got to decide who came and who didn't), it was also horrible for journalists to cover -- not good for a "media and business summit." Thankfully, this year E3 will be back in one spot at the LA Convention Center. We're still waiting to hear what Activision/Vivendi has planned.

We haven't heard much about Mario Kart Wii since it was unveiled at E3. Thanks to one intrepid forum goer with just a scanner and a dream, we now have a little more info on the game from the UK's Official Nintendo Magazine.

Apparently MKW will support up to 16 players in a game (does that translate to 16 different characters?) and will be the first in the series to offer Battle Mode online. Oh, and you can now perform stunts in the air. We're not yet sure if we should be troubled by the fact that in addition to some Wii-exclusive maps, "classic DS tracks will be recreated with Wii graphics." We're going to hold off on getting worried until we see how many new tracks are being included. But let's hope for at least half-and-half, eh?

Update: According to CVG, Official Nintendo Magazine has released a statement saying, "The details printed in Official Nintendo Magazine 21 regarding Mario Kart Wii were healthy speculation on our part and are in no way an official announcement from Nintendo. We are sorry if we have mislead anyone. We do not set out to mislead our readers. ONM apologizes profusely for any misunderstandings that this has caused."

So, did ONM spill a few beans too early, or were they just making stuff up?

[Thanks, Ian]

Nintendo's president Satoru Iwata sat down for a probing interview with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal. While N'Gai admits the interview was long overdue for publishing (it was taken back during E307), it has several interesting tidbits within. It only makes us think that it should've been published that much sooner.

Iwata takes time to talk about all things, including the widespread popularity of the DS in Japan, as well as the low sale numbers for Twilight Princess in the region. Iwata also says that third-party publishers shouldn't be scared of Nintendo's software success on the platform, stating that, in the end, it'll actually end up being better for third-party publishers.

[Via Gamesindustry.biz]

Chris Hardin over at Nintendo Players managed to snag some video of Geometry Wars for the DS, taking two different videos of the game's promised interplanetary conflicts between geometric shapes. For those who've been foaming at the mouth for Bizarre Creations' casual title, there is no better endorsement than the embedded videos. So, head past the break and check them out.

After a small hiatus following the craziness that is E3, X3F Achievements 101 is back with a variety of subjects worth covering. In case some of you have forgotten how this column works, this a space devoted to Achievement Whores around the world, and gives me the opportunity to chronicle my continuing conquest of Gamerscore, on a daily basis. This week, we cover a little bit of a backlog, as there's the survival of my Achievement streak during E3, my hitting of a couple Gamerscore Milestones, and the completion of a couple more 1000 GS rentals, TMNT and Cars.

Level Up's N'Gai Croal interviewed some of the winners of the Game Critics Awards, because, you know, he can. As the producer of the Best Handheld Game, Contra 4 The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Eiji Aonuma was one of the developers tapped by Croal to give his reactions to the win.

Aonuma said that he was "very grateful" to win the award, explaining: "As we were challenged to create something very different this time, I am particularly happy because the award appears to have meant that our challenge was worthwhile." He then went on to speak about the positive Japanese reaction to the game, which he ascribes almost entirely to the fact that everyone in Japan loves the DS.

Just minutes before he takes the stage, along with John Carmack, to deliver the QuakeCon keynote address, we bring you our E3 interview with Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. We had a chance to ask him about id Tech 5 and id's future in engine licensing, that new IP they keep talking about (and will be showing off any minute now), the Games for Windows initiative, their announcement of a Nintendo DS game, and more.

You guys have been laying low for a while.

Laying low, but busy.

I'm quite certain. At WWDC you guys come back out swinging, and I'd like to find out what your goal was there.

Probably a good discussion of that would start with all of the projects that we're working on that are sort of announced just so you get up to speed. And I think some of these things, people forget this is actually id working on this stuff.

You guys are working with Splash Damage and Nerve over here and then you've got ...

That stuff is all going on at id too, because we have internal resources that are devoted to that. For example, the guy who is programming all of the AI bot work for PC, 360, and PS3 is actually an id employee and he's devoted full time to the project. Of course, Kevin McCloud is the executive producer for id so he's overseeing not only the Splash Damage work but also others. So there's a significant amount of id effort that goes into a project like Enemy Territory because we're working hand in hand with all of the developers, and Activision trying to coordinate stuff.

It's resources and managerial?

Managerial? I guess it depends on how you define that word. It's design input, it's working with Activision and Splash Damage to make sure the workflow stuff that is set up is something we think is achievable and doable and is working towards the right direction. So, yeah, there is a lot of what ends up being management but not like what I would call production management work. Nobody is sitting down and going, "I've got twenty people and this person is working this many hours on this little thing and he needs to be done with that by Thursday at noon."

... The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass! At least, it was the best handheld game at this year's E3, according to the Game Critics Association. While a small part of our hearts hoped Contra 4 would take the trophy (after all, we know Zelda is all kinds of good), we can't say we're at all surprised by Link's win, particularly after all we've heard about the game so far.

Was there any doubt that LittleBigPlanet is the most original game of E3? The Game Critics Awards have named Media Molecule's 2D wonder the "Best Original Game" of E3 this year (a week after we named it the best PS3 game; and Joystiq also named it the "Best Original Game").

In addition, Killzone earned special honors in graphics -- it didn't match the visual fidelity of the original trailer, but boy did it get close.

Finally, the Game of the Show was Rock Band ... a multiplatform release that'll find its way on PS3. Not a bad line-up of awards for the PS3, no?

[Via PlayStation.blog]

If you've already read the Joystiq E3 2007 Awards (you have read them, right?), you already know we picked Rock Band as Best in Show. Now, the winners of the 2007 Game Critics Awards have been announced and, whaddya know, Rock Band takes the title of winningest game with three awards, including Best in Show!

Second place goes to Bioware's Mass Effect, winning Best Console Game and Best RPG. Some more fun stats: Xbox 360 is the winningest platform, with 11 wins, while Electronic Arts is the winningest publisher, with 6 wins (remember, three are for Rock Band!). Bringing up the rear, surprisingly: Nintendo.

We're just going to say the editing by GameTrailers was done to spare you. We've shown you the face of a man after the Disney press conference, we even gave the thing an award for being so fantastically painful. Is it as bad as the Jamie Kennedy performance at the Activision press conference? Well, it's a different type of pain. Instead of feeling bad for the man on stage making a fool of himself, in this case you have to feel for the audience who definitely didn't sign up for what was incoming. Watch, enjoy, and remember that this is supposed to be a press conference -- not the halftime show at some Six Flags concert.

The Game Critics Association has released their list of nominations for the best of E3, and Nintendo is all over the place -- particularly with Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit. The DS may have been spurned for anything other than the handheld category, but the Wii sure seems to be holding its own against the 360 and PS3. Unfortunately, however, none of the Wii titles made it into the nominations for Best of Show.

We'll skip over multiplatform titles like Guitar Hero III, but Wii games showed up in several categories:

• Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game (Wii Fit, Zack & Wiki)
• Best Fighting Game (WWE SmackDown vs RAW 2008)
• Best Action/Adventure Game (Super Mario Galaxy)
• Best Action Game (Metroid Prime 3: Corruption)
• Best Hardware (Balance Board, Zapper)
• Best Console Game (Super Mario Galaxy)
• Best Original Game (Wii Fit, de Blob)

An interesting mix of games -- some expected, some surprises. The winners will be announced next Tuesday. Think a few Wii games will pull out wins?

We were joking before (since there wasn't a real competition at the time), but now the Game Critics Awards have come along to validate our enthusiasm. Contra 4 has been nominated for a 2007 Game Critics Best of E3 Award for Best Handheld Game. It's in the running with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and, on the PSP, Dead Head Fred, God of War: Chains of Olympus, and Silent Hill Origins.

Here's the weird part. Handheld games don't appear in any of the other categories. Best Action Game? All consoles. Best Original Game? All consoles. Best of Show? Multiplatform console games! Were the console offerings really qualitatively better than everything on the DS (and Silent Hill), or were handheld games excluded from consideration for some reason?

All of us here in the Joystiq network are finally settling back into the daily grind after the WiFi-less chaos of E3. We've spent a good week and a half collecting our thoughts and have compiled our own awards for E3. Of course, we've got best and worst awards, but we've also come up with a few "special" awards of our own. Head over to Joystiq to see them for yourself, then pitch in with your thoughts. While you're at it, why not give some awards of your own?

We haven't fully recovered from E3 2007 just yet, but in the final stages (there's 12, naturally) of recovery, we're told it's only proper to hand out awards for the best (and sometimes the worst) of what we saw in Santa Monica.

The nominations for this year's Game Critics Awards were given out on Monday and, next Monday, we'll learn who the final winners are in categories such as Best of Show and Best Original Game. For our first Joystiq E3 Awards, we've borrowed those two categories and made a bunch of our own.

So what did we like the most? Assassin's Creed, Metroid Prime 3, My Word Coach? Those were all great, but one title stood above the rest. The answers you seek lie after the break. Disclaimer: Any comments regarding Harry Potter were made prior to the release of the book and therefore do not necessarily reflect what happens in the book.