NowGamer speaks to some of the industry's foremost games journalists to find out which hopes and expectations this year's E3 will shatter

E3 2009 is almost upon us and as always the mill of rumour and speculation has already begun to grind away. NowGamer will be at the event next month to bring you live coverage, but before then we thought we'd ask some of the UK's sharpest game journos to do a little bit of speculating themselves. Later we'll let you know what we think will be at E3 2009, however today we're going to try and put to rest some of the more implausible rumours surrounding the show.

Halo 4

Jon Gordon, news editor, 360 Magazine

"There won’t be any mention of Halo 4, nor a sequel to Halo Wars, expansions, or the Peter Jackson Halo project. Halo ODST will be the main focus for Microsoft, and they can’t afford to let that game get swamped by other Halo stuff."

360 MGS4

Luke Albiges, games editor, games™

"MGS4 on the 360 won’t be announced. It’s far too late in the day for that, and I don’t think it’ll be something people will care too much about. Plus the game will have to be on multiple disks, something that MGS4 itself pokes fun at."

Slim PS3

Tom Leclerc, features editor, Play

"Yes there was the leak, but Sony's will never be pressured into announcing something early, and I think it's too soon for the Slim PS3 to be revealed. Sony will wait until the stock starts to clear on the current batch of SKUs before they announce anything, which will probably be closer to Christmas."

Team Ico game

Sam Roberts, games editor, X360

"Sony seems very keen these days to divide its announcements regionally, with Euro-centric stuff getting announced at Leipzig, and US stuff at E3. So I reckon the Team Ico game will be reserved for this year’s Tokyo Game Show, and we’ll see nothing of it at E3."

Microsoft handheld

Simon Miller, editor, X360

"There won’t be any announcement of a handheld. That’s bullshit, Microsoft will never enter the handheld market. Nintendo and Sony have all corners covered, there’s no room for them to attack."

Sony 3D games

Nick Jones, editor in chief, Play

"It's too soon. Sony said at GDC that the technology for the Sony 3D TV is at least a year off, and Sony won't be demoing its games on anything other than its own brand of television. The Sony guys I've talked too said 3D isn't happening at E3."

PGR5

Jon Gordon, features editor, 360 Magazine

"There won’t be any mention of PGR5. In terms of driving games Forza 3 will take centre stage and Microsoft won’t want to deflect attention away from that game. Plus Turn 10 won’t be able to develop PGR and Forza at the same time."

Interesting discussion

Matt Handrahan, features editor, games™

"There definitely won’t be any interesting discussion about games whatsoever. E3 is a waste of a show. You can announce a God of War trailer or a Gears of War at any time. I’ll stick to GDC thanks."

Check back soon where we'll bombard you with speculation on what we think will be at this year's E3.