First off, yes, that's Mario's head on Stephen Colbert's body.

My plans for E3 fell through. As in, a certain unnamed party's promises of a glorious trip to E3 fell through. More like his lies.

You know who you are.

Anyway.

Having the Internet is like being at E3, because from what I understand, all the cool video game newsblogs post stuff live from E3. So it's pretty much the same experience, minus the free stuff and the game demos and the cute girls at the booths, although those are supposed to be in short supply this year. It was controversial.

On the game demo front, however, Microsoft is doing something unprecedently nice this time around, by giving 360 owners some keen E3-related content via the much-heralded Xbox Live Marketplace. Content such as trailers, weird promotional gamerpic packs, and--yoooou guessed it--demos! Well, like, two demos so far--Test Drive Unlimited and a game I previously reviewed, Top Spin 2. More stuff is supposed to come, I guess...COOL new stuff. That's all I know.

So today brought us the PS3 announcement. What? Sony actually said something about the PS3? Is it...something amazing?

I don't know. Let's find out.

According to Joystiq, the PS3 demos were running at 1080i, not 1080p. Of course, that page is riddled with typos from the live blogging, so I don't know. 1080i is cool and all, but amazing? Not really. We already have a console that does 1080i.

The controller wasn't received too well when it was first shown o' those many moons ago. Today, Sony revealed their new design, which looks--surprise--exactly like the old controller. Thanks, Sony, for remaking the second- or third-worst controller I've ever used. It's the third-worst if you count handheld pads as controllers, because the PSP had horrid controls. For everything.

The new controller has some features which we once dubbed "revolutionary"--as in, they're ideas that Nintendo came up with already for the previously-codenamed Revolution. XYZ, pitch, roll, yaw, and lateral motion detection. Great, Sony, thanks for taking really cool features and blah blah blah blah the second-worst controller I've ever used.

(Don't get me wrong about the controller stuff, because I still like the PS2. But the controller is the least comfortable thing ever. Thanks, Sony.)

The way I see it, it can't possibly be as fun as the Wii controls, because 1) the Wii has a seperate controller for each hand and 2) because playing tennis with a Sony Dual Shock controller would be like playing tennis with a steering wheel.

Speaking of "Dual Shock," the PS3 controller lacks rumble output. Thanks, Sony!!

Finally, the price: $500 for the "basic" package, and $600 for the "good" package. I don't know what they're really called, and, no, those aren't Canadian prices, either! 500-600 REAL DOLLARS! At least the Wii will (hopefully) be around a third of that price. Think about it, because I know you're not thinking about it yet.

In closing, I'm kinda ticked that Sony isn't doing anything really amazing with the PS3. Not anything that we haven't seen before. And they actually removed a feature that became standard! What's your game, Sony? What's your game?!?!!?!?

Also, if any of you saw The Apprentice, there's no way Michael should have gotten fired. And Lee is on his way out. And none of you watched The Apprentice.

Labels: E3 Report, Playstation 3, Xbox 360