I’m not even going to try distilling the E3 news; check out Next-Gen, Joystiq, etc for coverage. I’ll just point out two of my favorite videos: Super Mario Galaxy (I love how a 2nd player can help the primary player in simple but significant ways) and LittleBigPlanet (which continues to look awesome!)

Ever since I wrote about reverse product placement I’ve been getting pinged by people interested in the concept — the latest from Ad Age, which quoted me in an article about the current 7-Eleven/Simpsons promo taking place. (A bunch of 7-Eleven’s are being converted into Quik-E-Marts and selling goods from the Simpsons universe… like Squishees!) Really, really interesting! (Too bad that Duff Beer didn’t make the leap; I’d personally love to drink one.) ….and speaking of the Simpsons, the upcoming game from EA is sounding pretty cool. :-)

LA Times has posted an article about the difficulties that companies are experiencing with their Second Life islands. Not much new in there aside from admissions by companies that are disenchanted and pulling out. Wagner James Au (author of the fantastic blog New World Notes) fires back with some statistics, most of which are compelling, but two of which are simply misleading. First: “Each of the top five [commercial] sites garnered a .8 to 2% visit rate. Typical click through for a traditional banner ad on the Web is generally estimated at .5 to 1%.” Well, yeah, but what’s the cost of acquiring that .8 to 2% visit rate relative to banner advertising? Pretty darn high from what I hear. Next: “Just 18% of the world has been designated to have ‘Mature’ content.” Fine, but how much visitor time is spent in that 18% of the world? More than 18%, I’ll bet.

Second Life is pretty cool, but its defenders need to think of new ways to talk about it. (Btw, I’m not advocating that companies ignore SL — but as I’ve said before, they do need to completely rethink their relationship to it.)