Apple at WWDC and Microsoft at E3, Gadget and Game Frontiers Heat Up On June 6

With Apple at WWDC and Microsoft at E3, this week's gadget and game markets are expected to see inexhaustible news.

WWDC, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, is held annually in California by Apple Inc. Apple uses WWDC to showcase new software and technologies to developers, attracting thousands of developers. WWDC 2011 is held at Moscone West, San Francisco from June 6 to June 10. The 5,000 tickets of $1,599 each were sold out witihn 10 hours on March 28, 2011.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, is an annual trade show for computer and video games, with video game developers showing their upcoming games and hardware. E3 is considered the ultimate expo in the game industry. E3 in 2011 is held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 7 to June 9.

Apple's absence in E3 is well explained by its success in the gaming market. Apple's iOS is considered to be as popular as the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii combined. The triple-play of the iPhone, iPad and the iPod Touch dominate the mobile gaming market.

Apple is also known as traditionally ignoring the games market, offering little support for the games on the Mac OSX platform.

WWDC has just begun with Steve Jobs' appearance on stage to announce the much-rumored iCloud, iOS5, and Lion.

E3's keynote began at 9 a.m., an hour before Steve Jobs' keynote at 10 a.m. (CST).

Hours before the E3 keynote, Microsoft posted an update to the E3 website stating that Halo 4 is on the way, confirming the fifth installment in the Halo franchise. The post was immediately taken down. It could have been a controlled leak to get some buzz for E3.

So far, it was announced that YouTube will come to Xbox Live.

At 10:15 a.m., a twitter by Falcon said the difference in the appearance of the stage for Microsoft's Xbox E3 Keynote and Apple's iOS/OSX Keynote is striking. Many fans seem to have both live feeds on their screens, watching out for updates and breaking news.

In 2010, Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote lasted around 2 hours.