Lou Piniella was expected to step down at the end of the baseball season. Instead, the Chicago Cubs manager decided to retire on Sunday. He said that spending time with his mother is his main motivation. Said Piniella: “My mom needs me home and that’s where I’m going.” Managing his final game, the Cubs lost to the Atlanta Braves by a final count of 16-5. “It’s a good day to remember,” remarked Piniella, “and also it’s a good day to forget.” Piniella began his baseball career in 1962. He spent 18 years as a player before managing for another 23 years. During his time in the big leagues, Piniella won three World Series rings. For the final 38 games, Mike Quade will manage the Cubs. Quade was formerly the team’s third base coach. All the other coaches will remain the same for the rest of the season. However, at the end of the season, expect the 51-74 Cubs to make wholesale changes. Lou Piniella says goodbye to baseball (Image: TSN.ca) Post from: EveryJoe

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Lou Piniella Suddenly Retires

At the 2008 Olympics, Team USA was a machine. This year’s squad is smaller, less skilled and less experienced … and thus, much less dominant. That lack of domination was apparent on Sunday when the United States barely got past Spain by a final score of 86-85. Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose made big plays down the stretch after Spain had taken an 82-80 lead. Durant led Team USA with 25 points, who played this exhibition game in Spain. Next, the squad heads to Athens to play the Greece national team. Despite the close call, the Americans were happy with their play. Said Durant: “It was one of those games that was a learning experience for us and I think we made key plays down the stretch. We also played as a team and stuck through tough times.” Spain, who is considered one of the top three basketball teams in the world, has a number of NBA-quality players. Juan Carlos Navarro led the way for Spain with 20 points, while Marc Gasol totaled 17 points and six rebounds. Rudy Fernandez, Jose Calderon, Ricky Rubio, Fran Vazquez, Jorge Garbajosa and Sergio Llull are other players on Spain that NBA fans are familiar with. Kevin Durant – Team USA (Image: TSN.ca) Post from: EveryJoe

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Team USA Barely Beats Spain

  Insomniac Games recently announced in their August newsletter that they will be revealing their latest project between now and PAX West! Here’s a bit of what the newsletter read: With that, we’re happy to reveal that we’ll be announcing our newest game sometime between now and the Penny-Arcade Expo over Labor Day weekend. We’re really excited to finally reveal this project, and we couldn’t resist being the first to share the news with you. Even bigger news is that newsletter subscribers will be the first folks to see the trailer: the instant we announce the game – we’ll be blasting a newsletter with the trailer for you to view at home. The only way to be the very first to see what we’re cooking up next – is to be a subscriber of this newsletter –so tell your friends! If you’ll recall Insomniac signed a deal with Electronics Arts in a move to release future multi-platform games. It’s unclear if this new game will be a multi-platform one but it will be in demo form for the PS3 , according to reports , at PAX 2010 on September 4th at 6:30 p.m. Resistance 3 anyone? Source  / Follow Insomiac on Twitter

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Insomniac Announcing New PS3 Game Soon

This Week Quite a bit late with this one, for sure. Had some personal stuff going on for a while (health and vehicle related) so I had been pre-occupied with that and haven’t really been able to come on here and post much of anything. All that has finally been taken care of, though, so I’m definitely in better spirits now (that, and the Senate finally passed the much-needed Unemployment Extension). So what’s new for this week? Sakinah let us know that Hello Games broke even on release day with their title Joe Danger , which is a great title, by the way (hopefully this means more awesome games from them in the future). Darrin showed us the numbers for June . The Hulu+ service is available in preview form for PS+ subscribers . James Bond seems to be making a return , and the announcement of the title, Blood Stone , even has a debut trailer . There are a few pieces of other news as well, so be sure to check out the entirety of the recap and see what you may have missed. I’d go a little more in-depth here, but seeing as I have yet another Recap to write after this one, I need to manage my time . Community News From what I can gather, we didn’t really have much news in the Community a couple weeks ago. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t very active, though. We still had a number of posts come in. Tosh did manage to organize the top menu more, though. It makes navigation of some of the site’s pages easier and also better labeled the different link across the top to make a little more sense. There’s a new Group Forums Directory that now allows you to create new group forum topics from that page rather than having to navigate to each individual group separately. Keep in mind, not all groups have forums, so you may not be able to post a topic in a few of them. You can also check out a new Help Video on how to Favorite all the different things (news posts, topics, etc) on the site. If you aren’t a member, the contests should be enough to make you want to register! Not only that, if you’re logged in, you can join in on the Live Chat (which is always busy, save for late nights) and there are always secret contests being held there. Currently, the biggest contest we have going on ends in just a few days. If you haven’t already, you can read about the contest here . Enter as soon as possible for your chance to win a $50 PSN gift card! 20 Articles // 6 QuickNews Contributor of the Week Luke & Ace – 4 Entries QuickNews Contributor of the Week Luke – 3 Entries Most Liked Trev – If God Of War went Indie – 8 Likes Most Comments Ace – PlayStation Move to launch in these three flavors – 13 Comments Gaming News Hello Games’ Joe Danger Breaks Even on Release Day Sakinah – July 13th Landit Bandit: Landing on the PSN Today Luke – July 13th Sega to stop PS3/XBox 360 support for Aliens vs Predator? Tosh – July 14th June 2010 Sales Darrin – July 16th Killzone 3’s “Cinematic Deaths” Marc Macayan – July 13th Hulu+ coming to PSN+ members today! Luke – July 14th PlayStation Move to launch in these three flavors Ace – July 14th Stereoscopic Screen Sharing Darrin – July 15th Little Big Planet Marvel Costume Pack 2 this Tuesday Oly1Kenobi – July 16th Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days Demo Coming to PSN Luke – July 16th First Screens of Legends and Killers DLC for Red Dead Redemption Jay – July 16th DeathSpank for the PSN Tommorow!! oly1Kenobi – July 12th Young Thor dropping the Hammer on the PSP/PS3 Luke – July 15th Activision unveils new James Bond game Ace – July 16th Swords & Soldiers coming to PSN Ace – July 16th James Bond 007: Blood Stone debut trailer Ace – July 17th Amazon Opens PlayStation Move Store Sakinah – July 13th GameStop Gridiron Game Changers Sweepstakes Jay – July 14th Are George Hotz’s Hacking Days Over? Sakinah – July 15th If God Of War went Indie Trev – July 16th QuickNews LittleBigPlanet Costume Pack 2 on the Way Luke – July 13th Human Torch Little Big Planet Costume is Revealed!! Oly1Kenobi – July 13th PlayStation Minis Reach 1 Million Downloads Sakinah – July 14th Elektra Little Big Planet Costume Revealed!! Luke – July 14th Ghost Rider Costume Revealed for Little Big Planet Oly1Kenobi – July 15th Thor costume revealed for LBP! Luke – July 16th Play With Us It appears that there are going to be Game Nights every Saturday for Red Dead Redemption (at least for the time being). Given that fact, you can read the recap for the 07/10 Game Night here . There was also a scheduled Game Night for the 17th . Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of things and get back online with you guys… Poll Results Due to Google’s Interactive Pie Chart gadget not working right, I’ll have to do this the old fashioned way, but here are the previous poll’s results: Will you be purchasing the Move? Yes – 26 Votes 33% of all votes Wait for the games – 20 Votes 25% of all votes No – 12 Votes 15% of all votes Maybe – 8 Votes 10% of all votes When it’s cheaper – 8 Votes 10% of all votes As soon as possible – 6 Votes 8% of all votes Total Votes: 80 Thank You Thank you for your patience. I still got one more recap coming today, which will be for last week, so I’ll finally be caught up with those again.

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The Weekly Recap (July 11th-17th)

What happens when you mix Mario Kart and Wipeout with Call of Duty? You get Blur. Mario Kart for grown ups has been a frequent method of description when trying to sum blur up but it is much more than that. It features real cars racing round real locations but with fantastical weapons resulting in a frantic arcade racer with a fan/lights system that keeps you coming back for more as you constantly unlock and progress. Progression through the main career mode is defined by fans and lights that are attained in each event. Lights are determined by how well you finish an event with bonus lights awarded for driving through checkpoint gates or meeting fan target numbers. Fans are attained in a similar way to XP as in say MW2, so completing actions like hitting an opponent with a weapon to overtakes them and drifting reward you with fans. Progress through the game involves completing 9 different stages that consist of 8 events. These are either race, destruction (score points for wrecking other cars) and checkpoint (race against the clock collecting time bonuses). Lights are obtained at the end of each event and each stage finishes with a head to head race. There is plenty to do and its worth playing through again on hard and to set better times for the online leader boards. An excellent feature though, is the ability to share your score with a friend, after completing an event you can then send them a challenge to beat your score and they can reply showing how many tries it took them to beat it for you to beat. Blur is an incredibly social game with the aforementioned friend challenges it also features facebook and twitter integration, this involves posting updates of scores and unlocks that are user controlled. This means no auto posts about trophies or every race you finished unless you want it to. Unfortunately the Game’s website and leaderboards is still not fully functioning yet but hopefully that will be sorted out soon. The weapons are varied and perfectly balanced with shield, mine, boost and repair all doing what you would expect. The other weapons are Barge (sends a shock-wave out of your car), shunt (homing red missile), bolt (fires 3 bolts) and shock which places 3 electrified traps in front of the leader. All of these apart shield, repair shock can even be fired backwards (or forwards if its a mine), with the boost acting as a bullet time direction changer being the most ingenious! Most of the weapons can cancel each other out using the barge to halt an incoming shunt, for example, all helps to keep the balance and being able to hold 3 weapons at a time allows you to manage your power ups and save them for when they are needed. It works a lot better than the 3-tier system used in ModNation racers for example, they are also not randomly placed so as well as learning the track you can learn, which power ups are where adding an extra layer of tactics. The handling of the cars is straight up arcade with stiff turning and fast speeds, with drifting a required to navigate the trickier turns. The cars are broken down into 4 speed types from A to D with you starting at D with Ford Focuses and working up to A involving Audi R8s and Koenigseggs. There is a suitable difference between the cars and the tracks to warrant chopping and changing between each event with Amboy tracks suitable for off-road cars like the Land Rovers and Tokyo’s long straights ideal for power house Skyline’s to rip through. There are some cars missing that you would wish to be present such as Ferrari, Honda and TVR but you soon get over these losses by appreciating the selection that is present, it may not have a Gran Turismo size garage but there is still plenty there to play with. Blur is divided in half in a similar fashion to Call of Duty with the game offering you a choice of single and multiplayer when you start it up. Multiplayer features online, LAN and splitscreen options – that’s 4 player splitscreen with 4 other AI cars all working flawlessly like the good old days. Online features an addictive leveling up system like MW2 with constant unlocks of cars and mods as you play, challenges also help boost your fan counts to get to next rank. There’s even a prestige legendary mode when you’ve reached the top rank allowing to restart again but unlocks a unique car for your use and the unlocks are different from the single player with only the boss cars that you have earned carrying over. There are plenty of modes from the straight up 20 player races to MotorMash (deathmatch), Team Racing and Hardcore Racing without the power ups. The online experience can be chaotic, especially on tracks with plenty of Shock power-ups and be prepared to get rammed into walls but soon enough you’ll learn the ropes and start winning races. From the moment you boot up the game and hear the sublime Ennio Moricone remix accompany a slow motion scene of destruction you know you are in for a treat. This is a slickly designed game, minimalistic menus are backed by ambient music and helvetica font is used liberally and neon graphic effects. All the events take place at night or sunset keeping a consistent visual style with a slightly washed out low contrast aesthetic. The cars are authentic and shiny bouncing off the light reflections and the tracks whilst a little fantastical do feature real world streets, I particularly enjoyed racing around my local area Hackney. The music also fits in with the style of the game with plenty of electronic, drum & bass & remixes from the Ninja Tune label that perfectly accompany the on track action (sadly there’s no Song 2 ). Blur runs at 30fps which is works fine as this means races can involve up to 20 cars resulting in a lot of mayhem with no visible slowdown or screen tear, which is always welcome especially considering Blur is Bizarre Creations first multi-platform game after being X-Box exclusive since the PSOne days. The damage model is a little basic and doesn’t show too much in the way of unique impact damage but it just about does the job, the cars flipping when hit are always spectacular though. Blur is full to the brim with neat ideas, great design but also has the solid gameplay to hold it all together, it’s addictive and fun without feeling too unfair, a trait all too common with combat racers. There’s no doubting you can feel like you’ve lost a race through no fault of your own but you could always have been more prepared by hoarding more defensive weapons. to protect your lead and lets face it, there’s nothing like stealing a win on the last corner. If you’re looking for a fun, social racer to tide you over the summer you could do a lot worse than pick up a copy of blur, just don’t expect to find a beetlebum car in it though. *A copy of Blur was attained for reviewing purposes by the reviewer. Played the Career mode till completion on normal and played online to rank 20.

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Blur Review

Just a reminder you have until July 31st at 11:59PM Arizona time. To make your photo and donate to the lottery! More information on this Giveaway can be found here . Prizes are: 1st Prize: $50 PSN Giftcard 2nd Prize: PS3Blog.net T-Shirt 3rd Prize: Points refunded, plus another 500. There is already 13 entries in the lottery ! Hurry before it’s to late.

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Contest Reminder #2: Weekly Recap Anniversary Giveaway!

Celebrating a Full Year of the Weekly Recap! And don’t forget to check out the contest This Week So, this is a pretty exciting recap. Been doing it for a full year now and still going. With that, we’re also launching a new contest , so be sure to check out the Community News tab for contest details. Big prizes, too! Now, for last week’s highlights. Oly informed us that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is NOT a sequel . You can also read his Day 1 experience at E3 . Madagasca wants to know what games you want brought back from the dead. Demerson let us know that a Ratchet and Clank collection could be made , but that the developers themselves won’t be working on it. Both Ace and SL33PY informed us of Sony working on new hardware (I knew I read that somewhere on here, so sorry for allowing a double posting of a news story ). Sakinah also told about YouTube ’s plans on getting 3D videos streamed to the PS3 , which is a pretty cool idea. Red Dead Redemption will be receiving more DLC , which include a lot of new single player stuff as well. Dragon Age 2 will be hitting PS3 . And Oly showed us a teaser for a Kratos figure made by Sideshow Collectibles , which will have a formal debut at Comic Con . And finally, read Henning ’s impressions of the long-awaited Canada video store . You can also check out reviews for Tales of Monkey Island and a triple header of minis reviews. Now, there’s still more to check out, and I advise you to go through it all, especially the new stuff, and the contest. Check out the “ A Look Back… ” tab, too, for a brief history of the recap. Here’s to another year! A Look Back… So yeah, I’ve been doing this for a whole year now. Where the heck did the time go? Anyway, in this tab, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane. Each of the pictures links to the original article So back in the middle of July of last year, and with the increase of articles being posted and the like, I had decided to start doing a weekly recap. Without prior discussion with anyone else on the site, I went ahead and created it. Tosh, who had recently picked up ownership of the site, liked the idea, and since then, the Weekly Recap has come up every week (this is actually recap #53, which means this one is the start of a new year for it). Back then, it was very simple. It only listed articles and who submitted the most comments and the like, and since then, it had actually grown and evolved quite a bit. A couple weeks later, and after some discussion with Tosh, we changed the main banner to better reflect the new theme Tosh had implemented. It used the font used in the top banner, but had a newly (badly) made background image. It looked a lot cleaner and more professional than the recaps before, at least. The following Recap, I added some smaller banners, introducing new pieces and the like, giving more content to read. From here on, the more familiar Recaps started, with new banners to mimic the main banner at the top of the recap, dividing it more effectively. On the November 8th edition, in an effort to get more people involved with the community, and provide links to the Weekly posts, which were not counted, I provided the buttons that are found at the side bar. This was another feature I had used from that moment (the next week, I had added the New Game Releases button, which was another feature I had started). Now, on the December 13th edition, the recaps gained a bit of color to match the banner at the top. Features and content didn’t change from the previous versions, but it does look a lot better than the grayscale banners. These banners are still in use today. This is the one that will be most familiar to you. Thanks to a new feature at the time (the tabs), the Recap cleaned up a LOT, and navigation through it was made much, much easier. Until the February 21st edition , Poll results were text-based, but since then, I have used Google gadgets to create interactive graphs. Quite a few changes in a year. In case you’re wondering, I have added some new stuff to this one as well, in the Community News and Gaming News tabs, so be sure to check those out. As far as this tab goes? It’s a one of, in celebration of keeping this going for a year! Community News Not too many new features lately, but now, above every comment made by members (who are logged into the site), their point data will also be displayed . Given that points are awarded to people who find some of the new features, its a good idea to become a member, and participate in the Live Chat, where these mini-contests take place. The only other new feature would have to be the updated Weekly Recap, with these new sub-banners on this, and the Gaming News tab. To continue with the winning entries for the Red Dead Redemption Chronicle contest, you can now read EdEN’s entry , titled Life’s Tough , and Part one and Part two of David Goransson ’s chronicle, Dirty Pants . As far as part two goes, EdEN won the contest, which entails correctly guessing what would happen next. Though no one guessed correctly, EdEN was randomly selected as the winner. Now for a new contest. This one requires two parts. Part one, you must create an image superimposed with the avatars of the staff members (you can use either just one, or a combination of avatars). You don’t have to be a professional or anything, but it must, at least, show some effort. If all you have is Paint, that’s perfectly fine. Just be creative! Here’s an example , made by Oly and Demerson (well, Demerson did the caption). Part two? You will, then, have to submit points to the Lottery . Each lottery entry will be 250 points, with a maximum of 1000 points (4 lottery entries; please donate each 250 points separately). This way, Oly won’t necessarily win . You only need one image, and not one for each lottery entry. If you so choose, you can go ahead and create multiple images, but it’s not going to better your chances of winning. This is also one of the bigger contests, too, thanks to Tosh . Check out the prizes: 1st Prize : $50 PSN Giftcard (you can get PlayStation Plus with this if you haven’t already gotten it) 2nd Prize : PS3Blog.net T-Shirt 3rd Prize : Points refunded, plus another 500 Now, as for member avatars. here’s the list: Tosh – Darrin – Eddie – Trev – Jay – Sakinah – Henning – Gary Need a larger version of an image? No problem! Simply PM Tosh and he’ll get them for you. Good luck to the entrants! Just leave a reply with a link to your image and then proceed with submitting the points. Contest ends July 31st to maximize entries, without having to go into the next month . 27 Articles // 1 QuickNews Contributor of the Week Oly1Kenobi – 5 Entries QuickNews Contributor of the Week Oly1Kenobi – 1 Entries Most Liked Oly1Kenobi – My E3 Experience Day 1 (Part 1) – 10 Likes Most Comments Jay – minis Review Roundup: 5-in-1 Arcade Hits, Fieldrunners, and Age of Zombies – 13 Comments Gaming News Stephen Fry recording for LBP2 Trev – July 6th NBA 2K11 Cover is tongue out Marc Macayan – July 7th Dead Rising 2 Cover Revealed Trev – July 8th Comic-Con 2010 Thursday Program Schedule to Include SW:ForceUnleashed 2 and AC:Brotherhood Oly1Kenobi – July 8th Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is not Assassin’s Creed 3 Oly1Kenobi – July 8th My E3 Experience Day 1 (Part 1) Oly1Kenobi – July 7th Leave it to Sony to Snatch Defeat Out of the Jaws of Victory Sakinah – July 8th PS3/Xbox 360 – Which Game Do You Want To See Brought Back From The Retro Afterlife? Madagasca – July 9th Ratchet & Clank PS2 Collection to PS3: Hummm, maybe… Demerson – July 8th Penguin United’s Eagle Eye brings keyboard and mouse support to PS3 shooters Marc Macayan – July 6th Sony working on “future platforms” SL33PY – July 7th All White everything: White PS3 slim in Japan Marc Macayan – July 6th Sony working on ‘future platform related activities’ Ace – July 9th Sony: Microsoft or Nintendo Will Kick Off Eighth Console Generation Ace – July 9th Watch Youtube in 3D Soon on Your PS3 Sakinah – July 10th Twisted Metal’s Sweet Tooth Causing Havok in ModNation Racers Today! Oly1Kenobi – July 6th Remaining Red Dead DLC Announced, Includes Zombie Cowboys Trev – July 8th Dragon Age 2: PS3 Bound Luke – July 8th Dead Space 2 Prequel Arcade Game Announced Luke – July 8th PSN Video Store in Canada – My Impressions Henning – July 6th Official Review: Tales of Monkey Island Luke – July 8th minis Review Roundup: 5-in-1 Arcade Hits, Fieldrunners, and Age of Zombies Jay – July 9th Two Worlds II the secret gem of E3? Luke – July 9th Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 debuts with a bang Ace – July 9th Special Red Dead Redemption Sale Crashes GameStop Sakinah – July 9th The Six Worst Video Game Covers Ever MAINEiac4434 – July 8th Kratos Statue from Sideshow Collectables Teased for Comic-Con Release Oly1Kenobi – July 9th QuickNews The Prices for Alpha Protocol and UFC: Undistputed have Dropped to $39.99 Oly1Kenobi – July 9th Play With Us July 10th’s Game Night was one I had missed, unfortunately. Sinlock left for his vacation a day early, and I don’t know if anyone joined Demerson either. Its just been one of those weeks I suppose. If you missed the previous week’s recap , Sinlock and I had a pretty successful game night. It was a lot of fun, but a couple members had some connection issues. Other than that, there isn’t one currently planned, but you never know, so keep your eyes peeled! Poll Results The results for the previous poll can be viewed on the last recap. As for the current poll? We’re asking you “Will you be purchasing the Move?”, so if you haven’t yet voted, be sure to do so! Thank You Thank you all for a great year. I’m glad to have been getting these up every week (albeit, a little late a few times). Hopefully you like the new changes, as everything news-related should now be easily categorized so you guys can access news that interests you much easier. Also, beyond the banners shown, I do have a couple more that weren’t used, mainly because we didn’t have any news articles that needed them. Again, thanks for reading the recaps, and good luck to all the contest winners!

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The Weekly Recap (July 4th-10th) – 1 Year Anniversary

Today at 12:00pm est GameStop kicked off their powerhour sale. During the sales event GameSpot began offering one of the biggest games of 2010, Red Dead Redemption, for more than half off. The PS3 version of RDR was discounted to the attractive price of just $23.99. Once word spread about the powerhour sale, GameStop’s website was subjected to heavy traffic that caused the site to crashed  with reports of errors such as “Server too Busy” or loads a blank screen. GameStop’s sister site, EBGames, which also featured the sale, received similar server problems as well. The sale ended at 1:00pm est and both sites are up an running smoothly again. A quick check of both websites reveal that the sale was a success as Red Dead Redemption is sold out.  Hope you got your copy. Source

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Special Red Dead Redemption Sale Crashes GameStop

To give you some incentive by helping post all the news coming out of E3, I am doing a little giveaway. Between June 13th – 20th you can earn double points on posts (80 points instead of 40). Then on Monday June 21st at 8 a.m. MT I’ll pick 3 winners at random. Prizes are: 1st Prize – $20 PSN Giftcard 2nd Prize – $20 PSN Giftcard 3rd Prize – Points refunded + 500 points As usual donate 250 points to the username lottery the maximum amount of points you can donate is 500 points. Only those who post news between June 13th – 20th are qualified for this giveaway. If you’d like access to post news, please let me know.

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Double Points for Blog Posts during E3 Week plus a Giveaway

Our very own Oly1Kenobi is going to attend E3 2010 on behalf of PS3Blog.net! He’ll be attending June 15th and 17th. This is a first for PS3Blog.net so I’m pretty excited. Are you going to attend E3 next week? If so want to help cover it? We’ll probably need help next week just getting all the news flooding out of E3 posting on the website too.

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PS3Blog.net is attending E3 2010!