E3 Day 1 Coverage: Sony & Nintendo

Sony

At Sony's booth the PS3 and PSP had the most floor space. There were numerous games available, including Gran Tourismo 4 playable in demo form at 1080p. GT has always been a fan favorite and the graphics in the demo looked photorealistic (see the top-down canyon photo below). Games like Warhawk looked impressive, but were lacking in innovation where gameplay was concerned. God Of War 2 was being shown for the PS2 and looks like it will be making a showing later this year (big surprise, right?). The Blu-ray room was showing movie trailers, including the upcoming James Bond movie ("Casino Royale"), which is due out on Nov. 17, 2006, which happens to coincide with the PS3 North American launch. That way, if you don't get a console (likely due to shortages a la the 360 launch), you can go to the movies instead.

PS3 Booth Logo	PS3 Behind the Glass	PS3 God of War	Gran Turismo @ 1080P
More Gran Turismo	Yet More Glass	PS3 Premium - You can tell by the silver trim	PS3 Premium - Another angle
Sony's Crowded Booth	Wardevil looking fine	SingStar was a new item being shown off	Sing Song looks like an online delivery system
Metal Gear Solid 4 logo from trailer

I noted earlier that I played a few games on the PS3 and came away impressed with the visuals. The new PS3 controller looks similar to what we got familiar with on the PS2, but is much lighter, which is a good thing. The reason its so much lighter is because of the missing force feedback functionality (if you recall, Sony lost it's lawsuit with Immersion). According to Sony, the missing force feedback functionality came about because the motor interfered with the new tilt mechanism in the controller. I think that's just positive spin on the matter. That said, not having the rumble feedback left me feeling a little bit cold. In my opinion, having rumble effects makes games feel more immersive and I think it's a bad idea to drop that feature. All hardware photos were taken behind glass and no final hardware was to be seen on the floor. Prominently featured, however, were stacks of PS3 dev boxes running the games.  The crowds here were plentiful as you can see from the Sony booth photos.