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If you crunch the numbers things look good for the video game industry here in the Midlands. It's a little back of the envelope but if you take the figures from trade body Tiga then in the West Midlands more than 2000 people work in the industry and they contribute a quarter of a billion pounds towards UK GDP.

But the industry in the UK has been shrinking as countries like South Korea and Canada use incentives and tax-breaks to aggressively attract game studios to set up shop there. And while jobs in the UK are often highly-skilled with plenty of innovation much of the funding comes from outside the UK and so the profits flow back to foreign companies too.

That said with Codemasters, Rare, Blitz and many others the Midlands has about 25% of the UK game production industry based here. It's an industry with a very healthy export market too. I've even heard it described as a "low-carbon" industry as there are few emissions associated with a product that is designed, made and even sold via computer.

All this week we're at E3 in Los Angeles. It's a trade fair for the video game industry, closed to the public, where we get to see the latest developments and announcements from all the big players. Given the time difference this blog and my account will be a useful place for the early scoop. But we'll have reports every night on Midlands Today too.

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the state of the industry. Leave a comment, email me david.gregory@bbc.co.uk or send me a tweet www.twitter.com/davidacgregory