Seems like I wasn't the only one of the opinion that E3 made a splashy comeback with this year's event. Industry bigwigs also expressed their satisfaction with how it averted near-disaster, and giving a great show despite the pull-out of some companies, as well as the threat of the A-H1N1 virus.

Here are some of the industry personalities that gave their two-thumbs up to E3 2009:

• Shane Kim, Microsoft Xbox corporate VP: It's great to see it back. We're an entertainment business and we should act and talk like an entertainment business.

• Ben Feder, Take-Two Interactive CEO: We couldn't be happier, the energy in this room is unbelievable. The business is growing, the industry is growing. Every passing year there is more and more interest in the interactive entertainment business and I don't see this disappearing in the economic environment. I just see it growing from year to year.

• Gray Dunn, Sega Europe Development Director: I think they've hit the sweet spot this year, to be honest. The previous couple of years were very low key, but before that it was huge and probably over subscribed.

• John Tsui, Robomodo Director: I saw a picture of E3 last year and it just looked so sad. This industry is so big that to not have one big gathering of a combination of developers, publishers, press, retailers and buyers was a real shame. It's so great to have it back. On the development side of things it kicks us in the ass to get more stuff done by a certain date. We got a lot done in the last few weeks. I always joke, but there should be four of these gatherings a year, because if they do that, games would always be on time and on budget.

All concur.

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