For those who like to play games on the move, E3 featured an almost bewildering amount of new handheld hardware and software. By common consent, Nintendo's DS was one of the stars of the show; Sony's Portable PlayStation (PSP) was certainly the sexiest item of hardware in evidence. Lesser players such as Nokia, Tapwave and Gametrac also created a splash.
Nintendo's DS (which, the company claims, stands for "Developers' System" rather then the widely presumed "Dual Screen") positively bristles with technology. Resembling an oversized Game Boy Advance SP, it has a screen in each half of its clamshell, the bottom of which is touch-sensitive. It has Bluetooth-style wireless local area networking and is Wi-Fi-compatible, opening the way for online gaming. It has two cartridge slots - one for DS games and one for Game Boy games - and even two processors.
At Nintendo's press conference the day before the show opened, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata claimed dramatically that: "The DS will change gaming," yet little evidence was provided to back up the statement. However, hands-on time with several DS demos suggested that it will, indeed, revolutionise handheld gaming.
Many used the touch-screen as an input mechanism - for example, a version of Metroid Prime allowed users to fire by tapping with a stylus and change the game's viewpoint by dragging the stylus; meanwhile, the top screen displayed the game's map. A version of Mario involved four players racing each other to catch stars, whose position appeared on a top-down map on the top screen; an air-hockey game stitched the two screens into one display. And a super-minimal version of Pac-Man, called Pac-Pix, allowed you to draw a Pac-Man, determining his size and direction, then change his direction by drawing lines on the touch-screen.
Somewhat annoyingly, the Nintendo DS will be launched in Japan and the US at Christmas, but will not reach Europe until early next year. However, Iwata maintained that: "The gap will be smaller than it has been in the past." No pricing has been announced, but Nintendo says it will be "reasonable".
Which is unlikely to be the case for Sony's PSP. Sony remained tight-lipped about how much it will cost when it arrives in mid-2005, but it will probably cost in the vicinity of £200 to £250. The PSP is large for a handheld, but much of its surface area is taken up by an impressively crisp TFT screen, and its sleek design will make it appeal to those who must have the latest gadget. It will have USB and Wi-Fi connectivity and, thanks to a powerful Sony-made processor, will run games that are roughly on a par with the PlayStation 2 in graphical terms.
While the PSP is certainly the most ambitious handheld in gaming history, some question marks do surround it. Much of its allure stems from its ability to play back DVDs, yet it uses a proprietary format that Sony has dubbed Universal Media Disk (UMD). It is unclear whether there will be a decent library of UMD DVDs - or games - available at launch. Sony announced that an impressive list of publishers will make games for the machine, and that there will be versions of Gran Turismo 4 and Metal Gear Solid (renamed Metal Gear Acid) for the PSP, but it will surely be some time before the machine acquires a significant amount of original games, rather than ports from other platforms. The PSP, with a plethora of tiny buttons, also looks rather delicate.
Nokia, whose recently released QD successfully eliminated the original N-Gage's most glaring design flaws, announced an impressive array of new games. Previously unannounced N-Gage titles include the platform's first beat-'em-up, HudsonSoft's legendary King Of Fighters; SSX: Out Of Bounds and Fifa 2005 from Electronic Arts; and the role-playing games Rift and Xanadu Next.
More importantly, Nokia gave the first demonstrations of what it hopes will be a "killer app" for the N-Gage, the self-published second world war action-strategy game Pathway To Glory. Whether it will drive sales of the handset remains to be seen, but Pathway To Glory was impressively addictive. It supports at least six local players at a time and, through GPRS connectivity, will support a form of massive multiplay. It uses an innovative form of turn-based gameplay, in which you have a certain amount of time in which to move your troops and vehicles, before your opponent's turn starts.
Nokia allowed show attendees to try out a number of other games for the first time, notably Pocket Kingdom: Own The World, a turn-based action-strategy game from Sega, which will be a true massively multiplayer online game; a version of the much-loved first-person shooter Call Of Duty; the impressive-looking Crash: Nitro Kart; Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, which allows you to challenge up to three friends - who need not necessarily be in the same country - via GPRS; The Sims: Bustin' Out; and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm. There is no doubt that Nokia has drastically improved the quality of the N-Gage's software library, and is at last bringing out games that take advantage of the machine's blend of mobile phone and gaming capabilities.
The show's unique machine, however, was UK company Gametrac's Gizmondo, which is due to reach the shops in September, initially in Toys "R" Us stores, priced at a rather hefty £199. Not only does the Windows CE machine run games, video and MP3s, it also has a camera and, bizarrely, GPS satellite tracking built in. You can also use it to send short messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS), and it has Bluetooth.
Unfortunately, Gizmondo fails to convince. The company claims to be working on a game that employs GPS, but its presence seems pointless. And despite its Windows CE compatibility, the games lack sophistication.
Gizmondo is not the only obscure handheld gaming machine due to reach the UK soon. In autumn, it will be joined by Tapwave's Zodiac, which is on sale in the US and can be purchased from www.tapwave.com . The Zodiac is well-made and attractive with a decent games portfolio that includes Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Doom II, Spyhunter, Altered Beast, Duke Nukem and a plethora of mini-games. Two versions of the machine with different amounts of memory go on sale at a hefty $299 and $399.
Tapwave promises that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi cards will soon become available for the Zodiac, and the company appears to have half-decent support from games developers and publishers. It will be interesting to see how much it costs when it reaches British shops.
The inescapable conclusion that can be drawn from E3 is that a new age of handheld gaming is approaching. Nintendo, of course, has owned the handheld market for decades - selling, it claims, a staggering 168m units of all Game Boy variants to date. And while the innovative DS should keep it comfortably at the top of the market, new competition, with varying degrees of credibility, is beginning to breathe down its neck.
