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During a live demo of the PS3 and Xbox 360 title Silent Hill: Homecoming (the fifth game in the Silent Hill series), the game's developers revealed that a PC port is planned, although no time frame was specified. We doubt it will be day and date, but this is still good news. Lots of PC gamers have enjoyed the past three games in the series, although the original PlayStation title never saw a Windows release.

Just in case you're not familiar with Silent Hill: it's a Japanese-developed survival horror game. It's not much like the Resident Evil games, though; the characters you play in Silent Hill are not trained professionals. They're regular Joes or Janes who are faced with vastly superior and horrific monsters, as well as psychological trauma. The series is known for its deep storyline, multiple endings, and apallingly disturbing monster design.

2K Games and Gearbox Software's Borderlands (trailer embedded above) aims to be a marriage of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Diablo -- a Mad Max-inspired open world shooter with RPG elements such as character classes, level progression, and system-generated loot.

Those features were put on display during a live gameplay demonstration at E3 this week, the video of which we've embedded on the other side of the jump. It's tough to see what's going on in too much detail because of the quality of the video, so the developer commentary is the real meat. The commentator spends rather a lot of time bragging about the random weapon generation, but there's some good stuff in there about the setting and character advancement. And hey; it's first-time live gameplay footage. That's something, at least.

During an interview at E3, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed that the company hopes to add a movie making function to Left 4 Dead at some point after the launch of the core game. He loosely described features that would allow players to record, edit, play back, and possibly share their virtual near-death experiences. Sadly, that functionality probably will not be available for a while; we didn't see it in our own hands-on experience with the game.

Lombardi also mentioned that Valve went to Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks when it was first conceptualizing Steam, but was told by all that such a service would only exist "10, 15 years in the future." Of course, now Microsoft operates the separate and struggling Games for Windows Live service, which shares some features with Steam.

And yes, we know the above screenshot features the old, now-replaced Left 4 Dead characters. But how about a little nostalgia?

After speaking to a number of analysts and experts, TheStreet.com writer Priya Ganapati has predicted that this year's E3 show will be "a smaller, quieter affair that is struggling to keep retail distributors, media and investors interested."

With many key companies such as Activision Blizzard and LucasArts deciding not to attend, the effect of announcements made at this year's E3 will mean more than peaking interest in each developer's respective products - response to announcements will also be used to gauge further interest in the show itself.

IGN.com president of games content Tal Blevins says that "Companies will see how much coverage they get out of the show and how much value they are getting out of the conference." Ladenburg Thalman portfolio manager Dan Ahrens agrees, saying that this year's show is only significant due to Sony and Microsoft claiming "something big" for their respective conferences. "That's important because we know what happens with the PlayStation and Xbox 360 can drive what happens to the independent publishers' games," Ahrens says.