We just got back to the hotel and I’ve got the first round of pictures posted - E3 was amazing - I’ll write some more later on. In the meantime, check out my Flickr photos.

[Later on...]

Well E3 lives up to all the hype and then some. Walking into the exhibition hall is nothing short of breathtaking - your senses are immediately pummeled with audio and video from every direction. For all the guys that went to NAB and saw the huge Daktronics LED displays, I now know who buys things like that - the game manufacturers! The Daktronic screens are EVERYWHERE.

Our gameplan today was to do a quick run through the entire exhibition and hit a few exhibits and we did just that. We did a quick run-through of the Microsoft booth (kinda weak BTW) and spent some time in the PS3 booth. All the PS3 games had a “progress meter” signifying how far along each game was in development and I frankly don’t remember seeing any of the games beyond 30% complete. Nonetheless two of the games were very impressive - Gran Turismo HD and Virtua Tennis being the standouts. The rest of the games seemed on par with the 360. The “new” controller feels near identical to the PS2 controller - no complaints here - the PS2 controller is very functional as-is.

The line for Wii was monstrous - at least a 3 hour wait. We’re going to hit that one first thing tomorrow. Wii seems to be the star of the show - there is a good amount of excitement over the new controller. Not much on the virtual console feature yet - I’ll have some info on that tomorrow.

I played FEAR on the 360 today (sleighted for a Fall release) and was pleasantly surprised - while I was playing it I got to talk to one of the guys that worked with the Multiplayer testing. They expect to win shooter of the year for ‘06.

Umm lastly I’ll hit on the EA booth - simply amazing. The “inner sanctum” of it was a circle that was about 100ft across. The walls were covered with new, playable ‘07 versions of NCAA, Madden and other upcoming games and above it all was a 360 degree screen that stretched around the entire booth - under the floor were subs and the air was crammed with sound. Being able to turn around and see a continuous screen was extremely immersive and completely impressive.

Ok well it’s “late” - only 9:46PST but I’m tiiiiired. More Wiiporting tomorrow.

P.S. Tony Hawk walked about 2ft from me today.