COLOGNE, Germany – The Gamescom Awards are the most coveted prizes in the European games industry and an accolade for outstanding software and hardware. Last week, more than 275,000 visitors to Cologne experienced the spectacular innovations presented at Gamescom 2012. Among them were the 20 international jurors and experts from the world’s leading games media who made up the jury for the Gamescom awards 2012. It was this jury that picked out the winners of the awards for this year’s best games and hardware from more than 100 entries.

OnLive has broken its silence amidst a flurry of layoffs and closure rumors. As of August 17th, all of its assets were acquired by a newly formed company that will continue to operate under the OnLive name. The OnLive Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption and all customer purchases will remain intact; users are not expected to notice any change whatsoever. While Gaikai was purchased by Sony, Steve Pearlman reportedly turned away multiple suitors over the years until this action was required.

While E3 is over and Gamescom is right around the corner, retailer GameStop is offering its PowerUp Rewards members a chance to experience a mini-E3 just like store managers. Every year, the game industry brings in celebrities and game developers to showcase the biggest titles for Christmas and beyond to GameStop managers. This year, the managers will get their own show in San Antonio, Texas, but then approximately 5,000 gamers will get the next day to see everything up-close and experience hands-on with the biggest titles of this year. Nintendo Wii U will have a large presence at this EXPO 2012.

Cloud gaming company OnLive demonstrated the OnLive Game Service on the next-generation LG Smart TV with Google TV (G2 Series) at E3 2012. Capitalizing on the power of LG’s L9 dual-core processor, the service would make hundreds of top-tier video games from more than 60 publishers playable on-demand, without a console or PC. When the service becomes available, LG G2 TV owners will also enjoy free instant access to exclusive OnLive social features such as worldwide massive spectating, the brand-new OnLive MultiView spectating capability, Brag Clip video recording and Facebook sharing.

The idea behind E3 was to showcase the latest and brightest games of 2012, but there are always a few games that disappoint us. Some games on our list made serious changes to their formula, and not for the better. Other games took center stage at E3 when they shouldn’t have. There were many games at E3, but here is our top five list of disappointments.

Once upon a time, we had game consoles that didn’t connect to the Internet, provide online global rankings or even go “above and beyond” when it came to graphics.  This was during the heyday of the Sega Genesis, a console that, from the early 90’s onward, dominated the game universe for some time.  Kudos to Sega for not only making a capable game console, but also a library to back it up, ranging from action games to sports titles to unique fare like Gunstar Heroes and Toejam and Earl.  If you somehow missed out on this generation, don’t fret, because Sega is bringing it to yet another platform.

The cloud gaming folks at OnLive may not have a booth on the show floor, but it's certainly leaving its mark at the Consumer Electronics Show.  It has announced a partnership not only with Google TV, but also with Razer, in an attempt to bring its gaming services to more devices, other than the PC, MicroConsole and, most recently, iOS and Android devices.