E3 - Pre-Show Announcements Overwhelm, Entertain

Thanks to GameSpot for its massive E3 update list, GameSpy for a similar E3 index, IGN for its latest E3 news, and 1UP for its E3 dispatches, as the major gaming sites update on "hundreds of new games" revealed leading up to the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. New highlights include an "epic three-hour press conference" revealing Konami's new games, including screenshots of Metal Gear Acid for PSP, and elsewhere, screenshots and a preview of Metroid Prime Hunters for Nintendo DS, the announcement and screenshots of "unique armband"-toting EyeToy: AntiGrav for PS2, preview and screenshots of Mario 64x4 for Nintendo DS, and much, much more. What's been your favorite hardware or software revelation so far?

Comments

Big Wow For Next-Gen Portable Graphics

[Babbster]

After looking at the Metroid Prime: Hunters and Metal Gear Acid screenshots, I'm stunned. Small screen or not, we're talking about an incredible graphical improvement in portables. The lighting (or texturing?) in the Metal Gear Acid pics is incredible, and the Metroid pics are beautiful if still a bit jaggy (mainly because the DS resolution per screen is lower than that of the PSP. Obviously, graphics don't make for fun but they sure can enhance it a great deal, as well as providing more of the modern gameplay options with the switch to 3D. Playability is still a question mark with the small screen, but I'm sure jazzed about seeing true portable 3D.

One other thought. Nintendo should give Gamespot the "business" over that screenshot index for Metroid Prime: Hunters. It had me wondering if the pics were a joke until clicking and finding out the index was populated with the low-detail map screen instead of the main game. :)

Re:Big Wow For Next-Gen Portable Graphics

[erasmus_]

Nintendo should give Gamespot the "business" over that screenshot index for Metroid Prime: Hunters. It had me wondering if the pics were a joke until clicking and finding out the index was populated with the low-detail map screen instead of the main game.

I'm guessing you're not a programmer. With the number of screenshots that a site like that is generating, especially during the week of E3, it'd be absolutely impossible to generate an "ideal" thumbnail for each screenshot that they get by selecting the small area that represents each picture best. So in order to get a nice looking thumbnail index page, they surely have software that reduces images to a specific small width, and then cuts them off after a specific height. This makes the index page look good instead of uneven. Simply resizing each shot to fit that small box would distort most of them, so this is the best solution.

And anyway, if you look carefully, you can see a bit of the bottom non-map screen on each thumbnail. It's not Gamespot's fault that Nintendo chose to put the map on the top screen of the DS instead of on the bottom. BTW, 1-up's thumbnails look exactly the same.

PSP vs DS

[bludstone]

An interesting development.

PSP has around 100 signed development houses making games for the system. Now, so does nintendo, but this will be a unique situation.

Personally, Im rooting for nintendo, but I think the PSP will "win," for the same reason the ps1 "won" over the n64. The storage medium.

We shall see. We shall see.

Re:PSP vs DS

[JFMulder]

You can get a discman with 20 hour battery life now, so it's not as if spinning a disc is such a power hungry task these days. Maybe the PSP will cut that by half, which would be alright since the GBA SP has a 10 hour life with light enabled. (Sure, 18 without, but who plays with the light turned off on that thing, except when you're sitting right next by the sun so you have enough light reaching the screen?)

Re:Nintendo DS looks most impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah Sony is saying 2-2.5 hours when the screen is active and 10 with just music. Compared to Nintendo's claim of 10 hours for the DS...