Any Linux News From The E3 2011 Gaming Expo?

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is officially kicking off today in Los Angeles and will be running through Thursday. This, along with the Game Developers Conference, is one of the key times of the year for the electronic gaming industry. A number of game studios will be announcing new titles and other great announcements, but will there be anything Linux related?

Only time will tell if there are any Linux-related announcements to be found this week. If we know of any, it's of course under NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) at the moment. But here's a few random notes for what can be said at this time:

- id Software / Bethesda will be at E3 2011. News regarding the Rage game, due for release later in the year will likely come. There may also be an update on Doom 4. There's been some uncertainty in the past regarding whether these id Tech 5 titles would have native Linux clients, but indications as of right now is that there will still be Linux ports. The Linux versions of Rage and Doom 4 may not come at the same time as the Windows/PC release, but don't expect them to go the way of Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux. More interesting id Software news should come during their annual QuakeCon event that takes place in early August. Many are also hopeful that id Software will be releasing the engine source-code to id Tech 4 in the near future now that it's nearing the end of its commercial life.

- Epic Games will, of course, be another big name this week. Sadly, however, don't expect there to be any Linux-related news from them. Epic Games used to be quite a Linux-friendly game studio with their early Unreal series titles, but with Unreal Tournament 3 they messed up majorly. Ryan Gordon was porting UT3 to Linux but no Linux client will be published for unknown reasons to the public.

- Valve Software has said they will not be showing any new titles at this year's E3. Their press release issued in May just explicitly mentioned no new titles will be shown, but not that they will be missing from the event or the possibility of other announcements to be made. There's still some Dampfnudel to be eaten and while they may not make it as good as the Bavarians do, there's some interesting recipes in Bellevue.

- Running With Scissors, the studio behind the Postal series of games, is still hard at work on the Postal III game. Postal III is running on Valve's Source Engine and it's slated to be released later in the calendar year. It will likely have a Linux client, as said by the CEO himself. Running With Scissors will be back at E3 this year and in preparation of this week's events, they've released a new Postal III trailer. This new trailer with the possible Linux port can be viewed here.

- Linux Game Publishing is still working on something, but they won't be at E3 and this next port of theirs with almost 100% certainty isn't a triple-A title.

- Unigine Corp itself I don't believe will be at E3 2011 to show off their latest improvements to their very impressive multi-platform engine with excellent Linux support. They're hard at work finishing up the OilRush game. However, several Unigine Engine licensees should be at the Los Angeles event and may be offering up some news.

- Frozenbyte, the smaller game studio that's behind the Shadowgrounds games that have native Linux ports, that did the Humble Indle Bundle, and then open-sourced their games will be at E3 2011 in some capacity. Frozenbyte confirmed last month that their forthcoming "Trine 2" title will be shown at E3 in some form. Frozenbyte does intend to release a Linux client of the Trine 2 game and in a fairly expedited manner.

When any official Linux-related game announcements are made from E3, they will be shared on Phoronix. There's also some other announcement unrelated to E3 that's expected to - finally - become public on Wednesday, after a couple of delays.