Feature: E3 2010: The Five Most Frequently Rumoured E3 Announcements That Probably Won't Happen

With E3 speculation reaching an all-time high (we're finding it hard to keep our excitement for both E3 and the World Cup in check), the blogosphere's literally bulging with rumours of megaton-esque announcements from every corner of the industry.

We've put together a list of some of the most frequent rumours, and why they're unlikely to come true.

Shenmue III (SEGA) - it breaks every inch of our heart, but we seriously doubt the Shenmue franchise will ever make an appearance at a major show again. Unfortunately, the ship's long sailed for the franchise, and only supremely positive sales of a port for the original two games would likely change SEGA's mind. Even then, Shenmue was such a money-pit, it would be very difficult to justify a sequel to the mega franchise at this point. Like we said, it breaks our hearts, but that's the fact.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising exclusivity (Kojima Productions, Konami) - there's absolutely no doubt what the biggest pre-E3 rumour has been for three years running now: Hideo Kojima and the exclusivity status of the Metal Gear franchise. Last year, Microsoft dropped an anticipated bomb in the form of Metal Gear Solid: Rising's announcement. Kojima confirmed it's multiplatform status the following day at Sony's conference. This year, some rumours are suggesting Hideo Kojima will announce timed exclusivity for the XBOX 360 version of Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Given Metal Gear's affiliation with the PlayStation platform, and its strength in Japan, it's too hard to believe that Kojima would split the game's potential customer-base like this. Exclusive DLC, maybe? Any other kind of exclusivity - impossible in our opinion.

PlayStation Portable 2 (Sony) - with recent price-drops on the PlayStation Portable's line-up, and value added to the PSPgo system, some are speculating this paves the way for some kind of PSP2 announcement. While we think these certainly indicate the first steps towards a new portable platform from Sony, with so much content in the pipeline for the current PSP, we believe an E3 announcement would be too early for the PSP2 - unless Sony are planning on shipping it within the next six months. With big-hitters like God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta, The 3rd Birthday and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep all set to make an appearance at the show though, we think Sony will want to keep attention focused on the current PSP... For now at least.

The Last Guardian's release date (Team Ico, Sony) - indeed it would be the biggest of bombs if Sony were to drop a Fall launch date for The Last Guardian, but we're not going to hold our breath. While we definitely think The Last Guardian will be a big player at Sony's conference, we expect The Last Guardian's release date will still be some way off.

David Cage's new game (Quantic Dream, Sony) - surely, surely, surely it's too early for David Cage to be announcing a new project. Heavy Rain's only just out the door, it's surely unfeasible to think Cage will have something new to announce already. The absolute most we could get is a teaser, but, even though Cage has said we'll see his game "sooner than we think", we're not expecting anything from the visionary next week.

Stay tuned to PushSquare all week for the biggest PlayStation announcements. Of course, it's E3 so anything can happen. We just don't think the above announcements are particularly likely. Let us know if you disagree in the comments below.