E3 2006 console gaming - PS3

An E3 of this magnitude doesn't come very often. Two new consoles made official playable debuts, while a third finally hit its stride. All told, though, there was plenty to complain about; being a three-year E3 vet, I've learned to see the bad in the greatest gaming show on Earth. To that end, I've compiled the biggest mistakes of the biggest compa ... Read more
As a six-year E3 veteran, I've seen it all--from the moneyed excess of the Sony party to the yearly appearance by the Scottish development community. That being said, I was still not prepared for a $600 PlayStation 3. Tossing in that little bon mot at the end of a two-hour press conference, just before the lights came up, was akin to calling your p ... Read more
Activision secured its reputation with comic book fans by bringing everyone's favorite mutants to life in the action RPG titles X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends 2. If a dozen or so superheroes was good, the thinking goes, then 50-plus comic book characters must be great--and the upcoming Marvel: Ultimate Alliance brings together a huge roster of her ... Read more
If there's any publisher that's living in the future, it's Ubisoft. While a couple of its titles will be available on the PS2 and Xbox, every one of the games on display in the company's booth are being developed, first and foremost, for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. Assassin's Creed was probably the best game available in the Ubis ... Read more
The biggest news from Square Enix at E3 is that Final Fantasy XIII is being developed. The role-playing game will have three different versions: two for the PS3 and one for cell phones. Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 will be a traditional FF-series role-playing game, while Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be a more action-oriented adventure. Final Fa ... Read more
At first glance, the two biggest console titles at EA's booth seem to be par for the course for a company that's often derided for unoriginality. One could argue that Army of Two is just another of the countless futuristic war shooters--as an aside, where's my Revolutionary War FPS?--while Superman is yet another licensed game set to suck alongside ... Read more
Snake has a lot of work ahead of him. Not only does he have to deal with Metal Gears on the PlayStation 3, but everyone's favorite commando-spy also has to recruit an elite commando unit to foment an uprising and beat the stuffing out of Nintendo's most beloved mascot! Besides a new trailer and some behind-the-scenes information, Konami is keeping ... Read more
Sony had quite a few first-party titles for its next-generation PlayStation 3 console on the show floor, most of which, thankfully, did not require the same mind-numbing wait necessary for Nintendo's Wii lineup. Perhaps the biggest showcase for the PS3 was Warhawk--the only one of the seven Sony titles that incorporated the controller's newly ann ... Read more
Pity poor celluloid hero Indiana Jones--very few matinee idols have been adapted for game screens as often, but the results have always been, to be generous, rather mixed. LucasArts takes another stab at this evergreen property in a new game, currently saddled with the working title Indiana Jones 2007. Intended for next-generation consoles, the p ... Read more
Behind closed doors, Sega showed off an early version of The Club. This third-person shooter for the Xbox 360 and PS3 wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, mixing Fight Club and The Running Man with the over-the-shoulder POV made popular in games such as Resident Evil 4 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. In The Club, gamers join a secr ... Read more
I had an opportunity to get a closed-door look at two of 2K Games' next-gen heavy hitters, The Darkness and BioShock. We won't see either game until 2007 at the earliest, but both were complete enough to be shown running in playable, real-time form on an Xbox 360. The Darkness is a genre-bending action shooter with some heavy horror elements: name ... Read more
The PS3 is finally playable, and I got my first chance to test-drive the new console earlier today. I played Warhawk, which is the first title to utilize the PlayStation 3's newly announced motion-sensitive controller. The motion feature worked better than I expected, allowing me to orient my onscreen aircraft for dives and climbs, as well as banki ... Read more
The unveiling of the official PlayStation 3 controller design provided the finale of Sony's opening-night E3 press conference. As widely expected, the much-ridiculed "boomerang" controller concept that Sony had been showing since last year's E3 is gone, replaced by a design that's all but identical to the beloved analog controller of the current Pl ... Read more
Sony kicked off the 2006 E3 show with a bang on Monday by providing pricing and configuration details on the PlayStation 3. The system will be available in $499 and $599 versions in North America on November 17. The main differences between the two versions as highlighted by Sony will be the size of the internal hard drive: 20GB on the less expen ... Read more
After an inauspicious debut for the PlayStation 3 at E3 2005, where the system's unsubstantiated "gameplay" footage was largely overlooked in favor of the Xbox 360's playable wares, Sony should be more forthcoming in providing information and demos of the PS3 in action at E3 2006. The company revealed quite a bit of information at a March press eve ... Read more