We in the labs like to make fun of San Francisco, but if there's one good thing about SF, it's that it's not LA. The videogame trade show E3 is going on this week down in the City of Miserable Angels, and we're very happy to be skipping this year and not having to deal with the smog and money and sweat and desperation.

Of course, we're still scouring the internets for any hint of game news. There's plenty of coverage all over the place, in particular GameSpot's media blitz and Joystiq's ongoing blog updates, dealing with the horrors of E3 so we don't have to. But what if you're only casually interested in videogames, and you don't care about all the lights and noise and information overload? Well, we cover the internet coverage so you don't have to. Here are our highlights:

Console Wars
Both the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii were fully unveiled to the public. The general consensus is that Wii won. Nintendo played up its motion-sensing remote controller, which now includes a speaker. Its first-party games such as Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy will use the remote to simulate shooting arrows, swinging swords, fishing, and hopping over boss monsters and eating mushrooms.

The PS3, on the other hand, will be extremely expensive and larger and heavier than the original Xbox. Much like the Xbox 360's release, the PS3 will come in two varieties: the outrageous $499 for a stripped down version, and the no-way-you've-got-to-be-kidding $599 for the version that people actually want. The biggest difference between the two versions is hard drive size: 20GB versus 60GB. Also notable is that the 20GB version has no HDMI output, support for other memory cards, or wireless internet.

More after the jump. Image of The Staples Center the burned-out husk of a ruined city from Metal Gear Solid 4 on Konami's website.

Sony
The Playstation 3 also got a buzz hit because of its new wireless controller. It looks identical to the PS2's dual shock controller, but loses rumble capability in favor of motion-detection. Early reports are saying that the motion-detection feels "tacked on" and isn't as well supported in the games being shown at E3 as those for the Wii.

The lineup of games available for the PS3 surprised no-one — a high-definition version of Gran Turismo, the next installment of Metal Gear Solid (which supposedly has an astounding trailer, but we're not fans of the series), a God of War sequel*, and an "action RPG" with Marvel comics characters. Also on display was a still-untitled game from Naughty Dog which looks like Tomb Raider but instead of Lara Croft, you get some average-looking dude. Which seems to us to be missing the whole point.

Microsoft
Microsoft managed to steal Sony's remaining thunder with the news that Grand Theft Auto IV, the next installment in Rockstar's juvenile, best-selling prostitute-killing simulator, would be available for the Xbox 360 as well as the PS3 on launch. Previous versions of the game have had months of Sony exclusivity before being ported to other platforms. Microsoft spent its presentation emphasizing Xbox Live, online gaming, and integration of the 360 with Windows Vista.

Final Fantasy XIII
What may be Sony's saving throw against total lack of interest was the announcement from Square Enix that it would be releasing three new games in its Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy XIII (keep in mind that XII won't even be released in the US until November October* of this year) will have two PS3 games and another for mobile phones.

Spore
We're completely and unapologetically hyped about Spore, the upcoming "SimEverything" game from Will Wright and Maxis/EA Games' Emeryville studio. The trailer is viewable from the official site, and a video of Wright's actual closed-doors presentation of the creature editor is available on GameSpot.

World of Warcraft
For those of you who haven't quit in disgust because Blizzard totally nerfed mages with the upcoming patch: the company finally announced the other playable race in its upcoming Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. It's going to be The Draenei, which means absolutely nothing to us, but we're sure is earth-shattering news to people who've had more experience with the other Warcraft games.

And for those people, the company also announced an agreement to develop a live-action Warcraft movie. Our take in the labs: we're hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft, but Blizzard has all its talent points in the game-making tree, and has left the "innovation" and "story-telling" areas sorely lacking. Maybe there's enough of a "universe" there for a good movie, but as we tend to glaze over and lose interest whenever they attempt to start world-building, we couldn't say. Plus, Hollywood has traditionally failed at making high fantasy movies and movies based on videogames; this one will have the best of both worlds.

Sam & Max
We're also on the lookout for the upcoming Sam & Max game(s) from local developer Telltale Games. For E3, they've announced an arrangement with the GameTap subscriber service to distribute the game. (The game will also be available directly from TellTale.)

[Update: God of War II is a PS2 title, not PS3 like we originally assumed. Also, Final Fantasy XII is due out in October, not November, for the PS2.]