The biggest week in gaming kicked off today, with the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3 will feature hundreds of game title launches and previews, not to mention other things. And, Sony and Microsoft will most likely take the spotlight (again,) and from more aspects than one.

The gaming industry has seen a great deal of developments lately, and the Sony brand name has been consistently brought up in the past few months. The company will be launching its Next Generation Platform (NGP) today, though no official name – or any detail for that matter – has been disclosed. However, based on the HTML code of one of Sony’s webpages, some speculate that NGP may debut as “PS Vita.” Sony also launched the Xperia PLAY, a relatively large Gingerbread smartphone that puts a very strong emphasis on gaming with a slide-out game pad and dual touch joystick.

Sony is set to get lots of attention at E3, but not just because of the NGP launch. SiliconANGLE analyst John Casaretto forecasted, the latest security news involving the gaming giant will also be mixed in the buzz.

A PlayStation Network breach not too long ago may have been one of the biggest in history. It resulted in the compromise of millions of users’ personal data as well as a 44-day long shut down of the network. Further, the latest hack by hacker group LulzSec allegedly resulted in the compromise of about a hundred million accounts. These two incidents have left black mark on the Sony brand, we expect them to display some reaction to this at E3.

Alongside the Sony security aspect, Casaretto also gave his take on Microsoft. It has positioned itself in a very dominant position with the Xbox 360 and the Kinect. There are reports the number of Kinect games may go as far as to triple their number at the conference, though the platform is also attracting more and more gamers for other entertainment purposes, Microsoft revealed in a report.