E3 Day 3: EA, Blizzard, Microsoft & More

The remainder of the day was spent checking out the various booths in the South Hall. I spent some time with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Blizzard's World Of Warcraft The Burning Crusades expansion, Buena Vista's Pirates Of The Caribbean, Activision's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Call Of Duty 3, THQ's Supreme Commander and Company Of Heroes, Take-Two's Bioshock and a few others).

Activision's Booth

ET: QW's Big Gun

Activision's Poker Tutorial

Promoting X-Men III

Blizzard's Booth

WoW Expansion

THQ's Booth

TQH's Titan's Quest Area

Saint's Row Girls Saying Hi!

THQ's Destroy All Humans

VU's Booth

Say Hello, To My Little Friend...

More Tabula Rasa

Pirates of the Carribean

Bioshock - The Spiritual Sequal to System Shock

Showing off Huxley

Steven Spielberg was making the rounds.  He popped out of the Activision VIP area and was standing a couple of feet away from me (with his bouncers) - apparently he was touring E3 and checking out the various games.

Then it was off to Microsoft to check out the Halo3 video as well as a plethora of Xbox 360 and PC games. With regard to 360, the games on the show floor would have been enough to make us buy a 360. With the 360 hardware already on store shelves, Microsoft is focusing on software and we expect some great things ahead for Microsoft this holiday season.

XBox Booth Entrance

XBox Booth From Above

Halo 3 - Look at those reflections!

More Halo 3

Microsoft's Windows For Games initiative showcased MS Game Studio titles as well A-list games from numerous other companies. It's here we got to play Flight Simulator X. (Later, behind closed doors, we took a look at a renders of how Microsoft expects the scenery will look when played on a high end PC under DirectX 10. If the end result is something even close to the renders, then wow - you're going to forget you're on a PC.) I spent a few minutes flying a glider through the Grand Canyon and was impressed with both the DX9 graphics and the flight modeling. If flight sims are your bag, then this may be the ultimate flight sim sandbox for you.