topic = E3. Just sayin'.

I have to admit... all the game journalists are raving about how this is the coolest E3 ever... but from a reader's perspective I thought it was relatively boring... we already knew about the Wii, we already knew about Xbox 360, and we already knew about PS3... last year was more exciting for me.

Nobody had played the Wii or PS3 at last year's E3, my friend :)

wow did nayone see the vidoe of the day long line up just to play wii?

its on youtube and wow what a long line up

or 360...all those demos were run off of Mac's

Macs with the guts of a 360 inside. Seeings as the hardware architecture is near identical, and the gameplay experienced was inferior to what was delivered, I wouldn't count that as not playing.

Well, that's true, so that's probably why the journalists loved it... but for a reader who hasn't played either, there wasn't really anything new, except reading over and over how cool it is to play, and for some reason that doesn't excite me as much as new information, of which there was hardly any. So that's why it was boring for me.

E3 has always been a media-only event. As a reader who hasn't played either, first-hand experiences on how they actually do play is new information. Dozens of new titles released, a slew of previews (certainly more game-oriented then last year) and all that jazz. Maybe you're just getting old? ;)

Well... huh... I suppose that could be it. But I hope not.

I just find it strange, because last year's E3 was so exciting to me, and all the journalists hated it. This year I thought it was boring, and all the journalists loved it. I suppose hands-on accounts are cool, but I'm even more disappointed now that we're finding out that the Wii dev teams are not planning on implementing anything more than the rudimentary stuff seen at E3...

For example, with baseball, pitching is just a measurement of speed on the wii-mote, to do different types of pitches you simply hold different buttons, not twist-rotate the wii-mote at the right times on so-on... the batting is simply based on timing of the swing, and it's either a homerun, foul, or miss. Seems pretty basic and dumb to me... I'm really worried that the Wii is just going to turn into a novelty party machine for drunk people to act retarded with, unless they really implement some crazy difficult stuff and precision maneuvers. Plus, now everybody is saying that Zelda handles like crap. What the hell is going on here? Is the Wii cool or not??? I can't deal with it... I guess I'll just have to wait and see Wii for myself.

As far as PS3 goes, the show couldn't have been more boring. With the exception of MGS4, there was really nothing noteworthy going on. I'm still convinced that it's a must-have system, but the PS3 show was seriously boring. Was Microsoft even there?

I honestly would not take the accounts of journos who have but a short while to come to terms with the controller as gospel. I equally wouldn't take the tech demo Wii sports compilation as a cohesive example of what the controller can do :) Remember, it's a game console, not a real baseball, so allowances have to be made for those who don't play the sport (ie, most people outside of the US and Japan :D) and it's also part of a greater compilation of stuff that do tend to show a better use of the controller. The tennis game, in particular, looked pretty neat.

That's not entirely true. It is a trade show. I have attended as a (false) representative of a video game store, and snuck in 3 other times. It is not press only.. although they do get lotsa frre swag and such.

Very true...I know people who work for Game Express and Gamestop that have attended the show.

So you had to sneak in and commit fraud to get in ;) I'm not saying only press get in, but the event is geared towards them, not consumers.

And what exactly is E3

Sorry for a dumb question =P

Electronic Entertainment Expo. The big daddy of western gaming news, more or less.

So, with game consoles now approaching $600... why would someone not just bite the bullet and go with an ACTUAL computer ?

$600 could buy you one heck of a nice gaming system sans-monitor. If you really care about losing your HDMI support on the PS3, then that means you already have a DVI monitor to use for said computer.

The reason the NES was so successful despite it's cost ? It really was the only game in town. The Genesis was more expensive, and had less games, the atari had nowhere near the same graphics, and computers were still very antiquated to use. Nowadays, a PC can do EVERYTHING these consoles do, they can do it better, faster, they can be upgraded, they can do things that have nothing to do with games even, and you don't have to entirely replace it when the next generation comes out (and apparently now the price isn't even an object anymore).

If Sony really is setting the mark for the evolution of the game console, you will see the game console's demise sooner rather than later, as people will come to realise a PC is a BETTER value.

I have stated in many other threads I have a finite time for game playing. I don't have time to have to upgrade drivers, upgrade parts, reinstall drivers, manipulate conflicting DLLs and such. I don't want to have to waste time to optimize memory.

I have 1 hour to play, I want to play for 1 hour. I don't want to fix my PC for 40 minutes then play for 20.

Drop in the disc/cartridge, turn on, and start playing.

Even my machine with playing World of Warcraft, I've had to install a better video card, optimize my RAM, reinstall when WoW.exe starting corrupting on exiting characters. Just the reinstall was 2 hours lost to fixing instead of playing.

That said, new consoles have always been extraordinarily pricey. I imagine if you take inflation into account there's not a huge difference, and it is always only a matter of time until prices drop.

Ummmmm, with the NICE video cards running at like $400 a pop, you could not really buy a great system that will last a long time for $600 at this point. No way. Not to mention, if you wanted to stay top of the line running all the new games at full speeds with everything turned up, you would have to upgrade probably every year, not every 5 or 6 years like you would a console. A better value? no way.

And while I love my computer, there are some games that I could never see coming out on a computer and actually being good. Just like there are games I could never see coming out on a console and being good.

And the release price for the PSX in 1995 was $300. I don't see much of a big deal in the price difference over 11 years.