How to watch the year's biggest video gaming news live: E3 2010

(AFP PHOTO/Gabriel BOUYS)

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is back and, after a few years in the wilderness, more of a showpiece for video games than ever. The biggest companies will be wheeling out their biggest guns to trumpet upcoming releases and, best of all, the most important press conferences are streamed live and for free on the internet.

Although E3 is a closed and ticketed press event, a number of websites have been supporting live coverage of the key press conferences in recent years. G4TV are the cable network charged with running E3's official broadcast, so stay locked to their website for up-to-the-minute news and video straight from the Expo's floor.

In addition, IGN, GameTrailers, and GameSpot have all carried the official live streams in the past, and it's useful to have more than one of these bookmarked in case one or the other encounters difficulties with overwhelming demand, resulting in slower loading times.

Microsoft and Nintendo have both shown their own press conferences on their respective websites in the past couple of years. Sony have preferred to upload the material to the PlayStation's community space, Home.

Not everyone will find video streams to be the most practical way of following breaking news from E3, so a number of top games sites provide rolling news feeds, reports from the show floor, screenshots, analysis and trailers. So among others, check out 1UP, GiantBomb, Joystiq, Eurogamer, Kotaku, Shacknews and VG247.

E3 presentation schedule
Microsoft: Monday June 14, 10am
Electronic Arts: Monday June 14, 2pm
Ubisoft: Monday June 14, 5pm
Activision: Monday June 14, 7pm
Nintendo: Tuesday June 15, 9am
Sony: Tuesday June 15, 12pm
Konami: Wednesday June 16, 1pm

All times shown are for Los Angeles, California (PDT). For east coast USA, add 3 hours; for the UK, 8 hours; for Europe, 9 hours; for Japan, 16 hours.

Live video
G4TV - http://e3.g4tv.com
GameSpot - http://e3.gamespot.com
GameTrailers - http://www.gametrailers.com/e3
IGN - http://e3.ign.com

Other games news sites
1UP - http://www.1up.com
GiantBomb - http://www.giantbomb.com
Joystiq - http://www.joystiq.com
Eurogamer - http://www.eurogamer.net
Kotaku - http://www.kotaku.com
Shacknews - http://www.shacknews.com
VG247 - http://www.vg247.com

Company websites
Activision - http://investor.activision.com (registration required)
Konami - http://www.konami.com/e3
Microsoft - http://Www.xbox.com
Nintendo - http://www.nintendo.com
Sony - http://us.playstation.com/ps3/playstation-move