Aww, and I was so gearing up to see some Ghostbusters PSP action in E3! With a sudden turn of events (and to think it's so last minute, with only three weeks left before the actual event), Atari has announced that they're pulling out from this year's gaming event - and no, it's not really because of Swine Flu concerns.

With 13 confirmed cases of the H1N1 Swine Flu in California, Governor Arnie's raised a State of Emergency. If the situation doesn't improve within a month, the E3 Expo might not push through. Despite these risks, the ESA event organizers are optimistic that the E3 will indeed happen, come hell, high water, or pandemic (and by pandemic, I'm obviously not referring to the studio).

The ESA board must have been reduced to tears of joy yesterday - to them, I'm sure, they now believe there is a god. This week, the Swedish court has found the four operators of torrent site The Pirate Bay guilty as charged for copyright infringement and illegal activities (digitally distributing illegal copies of games and media content). Of course, ESA is more than happy with this victory against the ongoing war on piracy - so happy, in fact, that they had to come up with an official press release about it!

What to do when your event is drawing flak and your circle of supporters are leaving one by one? Try a different strategy, for one. And this is what ESA seems to be doing for next year's E3. Talks of them "going public" are circulating the Internet's grapevines. But how probable is this move?

Leipzig's over and the Tokyo Game Show won't be till October. But that doesn't mean there won't be any other conferences around to satisfy ever-curious gamers' appetites. And this time, we won't even have to fly overseas. The Austin Game Developers Conferences is coming up next, and they've added in a nice touch to this year's event.

Remember that mandatory game ratings bill that was passed by the New York Senate last month? Just yesterday, New York Governor David Paterson signed the video game bill into law, creating an interesting precedent for videogame legislation. Find out the full details of the videogame law after the jump!

Wedbush Morgan Analyst Michael Pachter thinks that E3 is "heading for extinction soon" because it doesn't address the core constituents of the industry, namely, media, retail, investors, and consumers. Want to find out more, then check out the full article.

More unhappy predictions for ESA, the organization behind the annual E3 convention. Hal Halpin, head and founder of the ECA (a non-profit organization dedicated to the interests of gamers), believes that more companies are likely to leave the ESA. Sounds like E3 is headed for some tough times. More in the full article.

This month saw the exodus of three companies from the ranks of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Following the trend started by Activision, Vivendi, and LucasArts, id Software of Doom and Quake fame recently confirmed that it will also be taking its leave from the video gaming group. More details on this on our full article after the jump.

It's a bit late, but given the timeliness of Jeff Brown's opinions of late, we thought this might clear up some air on the ESA issue. It appears that a copy of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) document accounting for the financial transactions at the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has made it to the hands of the media, and what has been discovered might be the real reason why major members are bailing from the premiere software organization. Check the full article for more details.