Nintendo had its E3 games trade show in Los Angeles this morning, which was duly live-blogged by Engadget's Joshua Fruhlinger. After that, reporters spent some time trying to work out whether there was, in Gamasutra's words, "anything truly new on show, and if not, does that really matter?"
The little Wii with its twee graphics was presented as the console for granddads and mothers with small children, but as CNet's Crave put it: "hardcore gamers loyal to the Nintendo brand were completely left in the dust."
Well, obviously it doesn't matter. Wii consoles continue to sell faster than Nintendo can make them. The only real challenge is carting truckloads of money to the bank....
After that, it's on to live-blogging the Sony event, where Sony announces that more than 130 games are coming to the PlayStation 2 this year. More big news: Sony will be delivering video from the online PlayStation Store.
As for the PS3, Engadget says: "Starting in September, the 80GB will have the current functionality of the 40GB PS3, for $399." (So Sony is reducing functionality again.) The big news: "God of War 3 is coming to PlayStation 3" -- but what's shown is just a video. And finally ... Zipper's Massive Action Game. Again, it's just a video.
It will be interesting to see how this goes down with the gaming audience, because they may not be saying: "Wow, that PS2 bundle with Lego Batman looked really cool." I suspect that the success of the PS2, great sales of the PSP, movie downloads, and what amounts to a 40GB to 80GB hard drive upgrade for the PS3 plus some video previews might not have thrilled the ones who wanted games-games-games.
The quote of the day competition was a shoo-in for Satoru Iwata, Nntendo's president, who quipped: "Even Nintendo employees could not have imagined five years (ago) that we would be selling millions of bathroom scales around the world."
