One more poke at the E3 coverage then, since the Gamasutra folks updated their coverage later on Friday night with some more decent exclusive stories from the whirlwind media conf in Los Angeles:

- Sony exec Peter Dille caused quite a stir by going on the offensive against Microsoft in a Gamasutra interview excerpt: "With the Xbox 360 you’ve got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don’t, and none of them have Blu-Ray, and the HD-DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product? And by the way, it doesn’t even work." Blimey.

- We then spoke to Microsoft's Peter Moore, who obviously didn't want to get too far into the contretemps, but did note of the next-gen optical disc battle: "I was just looking at HD-DVD numbers over the weekend, and I think Toshiba may have an opinion about that... Of course, the fact that Sony has an economic interest in making sure that it’s dead is interesting. I think his comments will be read with interest by folks in the European Union, and looking at the tactics the Blu-Ray Forum has been using to ensure that retailers do things their way." Some v. interesting hints on unfair competition in here.

- Another neat story was Blizzard's Frank Pearce confirming a third title in development - apart from World Of Warcraft and Starcraft II, that is. Don't often get concrete staff numbers, either: "In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys." There's rampant speculation that the third project is Diablo III and will be announced at BlizzCon, but who knows?

- Ah, and just to finish up the Gamecock weirdness, we covered their Death Of E3 funeral procession, which "...wound its way from the Santa Monica pier to Venice Beach, Calif. The procession was complete with drums, a horn section, a Chinese dragon, and masked performers on stilts." They're certainly never boring!

[Many thanks to Gamasutra staffers Brandon Sheffield and Jason Dobson for doing a fine job of chasing these up, and Brandon Boyer for co-ordinating the coverage and only losing around 50% of his hair in the process.]