It's the first day of the E3 Conference/Expo and there isn't any earth-shattering news to report. All of the really big press releases are coming tomorrow as is the opening of the exhibit hall.

However, I did attend 3 sessions today and I'll give the recap here.

W3:Smart Games Break out

Ouch... II should have looked elsewhere, but the other two looked like panels I'd heard last year. It started badly with a Microsoft pitch disguised as a comment on the future of learning games and then dug itself a larger hole by becoming little more than a pitch for the technologies at play with each of these companies... and with the exception of the U.S. Army, they didn't give good demo.

W5: Using the web to publish, market and protect your game

This session was much better than the first. The moderator had good control and knew his stuff, which made it much easier to listen to the players. Wild Tangent did a good job of pitching their technologies for web-based delivery, including the idea of "streaming games" and some heavy-duty compression that they currently do. The folks from Garage Games spoke about their engine and how it is intended to bring about a revolution in independent game development by lowering the barrier to entry. MSN spoke about their recent moves with the MSN Messenger product and new initiatives. Finally, the US Army discussed their success in getting over 7 Million downloads for their game.

W7: Persistent Worlds: Where is the bar now

As usual, a fun panel with Gordon Walton from Sony Online Entertainment (previously of EA) doing the moderation. Lots of topics covered and an excellent group of people, including: Richard Vogel (SOE, Ex Producer for SWG), Jeff Anderson (CEO, Turbine), and David Cohen-Corval (Nevrax).