Dear readers, it now becomes travel time for many of us in the gaming industry. Next week, many of us are off to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

As I understand it, E3 is a shell of its former self. Despite being a close to $20 Billion a year industry, E3 has gone through some rough times in the past 3 years. In 2006, prior to my being in this position, it was full tilt. Apparently it was very expensive for suppliers. In 2007, it was scaled back so much, that almost no retailers attended. From what we hear, 2008 will be a better year. Sam's Club did not go in 2007, but we are going this year. Rumors are everywhere over some major announcements coming out of this meeting. I will not repeat those, but once "official" announcements are made, we hope to be able to grab some WiFi and post some images, video and text here. We would love to be able to provide you with some of the latest "411" from E3.

The week after, many of us are again packing our bags as Microsoft will be holding their Vision Summit. At this meeting, Microsoft's version of Destination PlayStation, we would also expect to see some quality game play. It is a chance to meet with some of the key players in the industry. If it is anything like DPS, we are in for a great week. This will be my first time attending a Vision summit and I am looking forward to it. We will probably not be able to blog from Vision, but on items we can discuss, we will post a summary if applicable as we did with Vision. We love keeping our Members in the loop! 

So, what announcements are you hoping to hear from E3 and Vision? Anything I should really be looking for that we do not presently carry in the clubs?