E3 2008 is over. Finished. But Nintendo hasn't forgotten and is sending out thank you notes, thanking folks for attending its presser. The letter reads: "THANK YOU for attending our E3 media briefing. Nintendo aims to bring people engaging experiences...to make them smile...and we hope we provided you at least a little of that during our event". Below that, it's signed by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, vice president of corporate affairs Denise Kaigler and vice president of sales & marketing Cammie Dunaway. Regardless of what you thought of Nintendo's E3 press conference (eh...), classy of them to send out thank you notes.

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E3 was pretty hectic for me, so I only vaguely remember Flynn and the GayGamer crew pulling me aside to answer me several questions, most of which were gaming related. Thankfully they've been posting a series of videos called "My Scrapbook of Precious E3 Memories, in which members of the gaming press offer up their opinions of the import topics of the show, such as Favourite Game, Worst Game, Pet Peeves, and the most important question of them all, "Do you manscape?"

Manscaping is what a man does to maintain his appearance, generally referring to certain places that shall remain nameless. Aren't you dying to know our answers? Hit the link below to see McWhertor, Ashcraft and I handle the question with varying degrees of tact, and be sure to check out the whole series for more opinions we'll probably regret having put to video later.

My Video Scrapbook of Precious E3 Memories Part 8: Do You Manscape? [GayGamer.net]

On Tuesday we posted the official Best of E3 awards, but do they really make a difference? Do what the critics feel are the best of the best actually translate into higher sales? UBS analyst Ben Schachter seems to think so, compiling this handy chart to prove it.

"Do awards translate into higher sales? The answer is yes, but not always. Additionally certain categories have a higher correlation between awards and sales. Since these awards began in 1998, the Best Console title has sold an average of 2.42 million units life-time in the U.S., according to NPD", Schachter explained.

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You've had a chance to digest the raw data of who won what from the Game Critics Best of E3 awards. Now here's a bit of fuel for that angry fanboy deep inside you: A run down of all of the 2008 Best of E3 Game Critics Awards stats.

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Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet tied for the game with the most awards handed out for this year's Game Critics Best of E3 awards.

Fallout 3 landed the coveted Best of Show award as well as Best Role Playing Game, while LittleBigPlanet landed Best Console Game and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game. However LBP was passed up for Best Original Game, with Mirror's Edge getting the nod instead.

Hit up the jump for the full list of winners and feel free to look back at our votes and the full finalist list, to see how they compare.

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Last week the Game Critics Best of E3 finalists were announced with much fanfare and debate.

Today, I turned in Kotaku's official ballot for who we think the winners should be. I have to say this was one of the harder years to judge. In particular you had games like Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet all vying for the same awards and let's not forget Spore, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, LEGO Batman, etc, etc.

Hit up the jump for our official ballot and then chime in to explain how we got it all wrong.

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"E3 this year, in my opinion, it was pretty much disappointing to everybody" id CEO Todd Hollenshead told me early today during an interview. "The press were disappointed, the people I talked to in the industry are disappointed, almost everyone agree that that was the wrong way to do it".

It's too early to tell if the shrinking E3 has helped bolster id's own id-centric annual show QuakeCon. Usually id Software waits until the Saturday of the show to get official attendance numbers.

But Hollenshead is already sure that QuakeCon is the right way to host a gaming conference.

"I think we struck a balance of being vendor supported and still being in touch with the gamers", he said. "We had over 6,000 hours of volunteer time, that's like the polar opposite of E3,. which is all about business".

In fact id Software only officially showed up at E3 as a single announcement during the Electronic Arts press conference. They were there to tell the world that EA would be publishing their upcoming id Tech 5 game, Rage.

And even that had to be modified to fit in with what E3 and its attendees expect from the show.

"We were told you can't show this stuff because of these five reasons", Hollenshead said. "Last night (during QuakeCon) we had the bigger, better, more hardcore, not suitable for investor conference (announcement) for Rage and Doom".

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The idea of going to E3 for me was nothing less than a dream come true, seriously. About a week before we embarked to Los Angeles Crecente sent a letter of how the housing situation as going to work, along with a few friendly reminders.

So of course I took a look at my roommate situation and saw that Michael Fahey and I were going to be bunk mates for the next few days. No more than a minute later I get this hysterical laugh from Owen on instant message. "Adam, good luck trying to sleep BWA HA HA HA" he says. I was dumbfounded. There was no way I could have possibly been prepared for what was in store.

My E3 dreams were shattered when it came time to go to sleep. The great thing about being the Kotaku video intern (at the time) was that I got to capture all of the wonderful Hallmark moments. Video, after the jump.

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When Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw isn't reviewing video games like Age of Conan or Alone in the Dark, he's meeting his contractual obligations with The Escapist, weighing in on things like trailers shown at E3. In four minutes and forty seconds, Yahtzee picks apart non-playable previews for games like Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy XIII, Resident Evil 5 and Fallout 3 with sexy results. Actually, that should've been hilarious results. We were still thinking about the pus covered roulette wheel and anal shielding imagery from this episode. Two of our choicest fetishes!

Zero Punctuation: The E3 Trailer Park [The Escapist]

Let's just say we shant be getting any job offers to be Michael Pachter's trusted aide, as our incorrect guesses about what we thought we'd see at E3 this year grossly outnumbered our correct ones. In our defence, we cast a wide net with our E3 '08 predictions, with some clearly outrageous bets that were ground more in fantasy than reality. Plus, E3 sucked.

While we were surprised to see a lack of X-waggle and to learn that Kid Icarus was a no-show, that Duffy performance clearly came out of nowhere. Hit the jump for the final tally and keep your eyes peeled for the winner — and possible tie-breaker — of our E3 Fantasy Betting Pool contest. Woot!

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