This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), spectacularly lived up to its billing as the high point of the games industry's calendar. Held in Los Angeles last week with roughly 1,350 games on show, and a barrage of news announcements, E3 provided a clear picture of the games that will vie for top slot in the Christmas charts, and highlighted several industry trends and themes.
Handheld gaming platforms grabbed the limelight, thanks mainly to Sony Computer Entertainment president and chief executive Ken Kutaragi's announcement of the PlayStation Portable (PSP), Sony's first foray into portable gaming. Kutaragi did not demonstrate the machine itself, but said it would arrive late next year, which may well translate to 2005 in Europe. The PSP will run 3D games and MPeg4 video from a proprietary 1.8Gb optical disc format Sony has named Universal Media Disk (UMD).
Nokia meanwhile announced that its N-Gage "game deck" will arrive on October 7, priced around £200, although mobile operators may discount the contract price. There will be 10 games and titles such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon to come. In the much-admired UK Pavilion, a stand sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, a British handheld gaming device called the B'ngo was also demonstrated.
Both Sony and Microsoft announced that they would launch sports-specific annexes to their online console gaming networks, in which sports gamers will be able to compete on a league-table basis. Sony stole a march by announcing an exclusive deal for the 2003/04 season with EA, covering online versions of its sports games. As only the PlayStation 2 version of Fifa Football will be online-capable, Microsoft's XSN (Extreme Sports Network) will, crucially, lack a football game. Microsoft's vice president of games software, Ed Fries, said that Microsoft is trying to rectify the situation.
In terms of games, first-person shoot-'em-ups generated the most plaudits. Vivendi Universal's Half-Life 2 (for the PC) was the game of the show by some distance. Its jaw-dropping engine, which lets designers create levels in which each object has real-world physics, and which supports text-to-speech lip-synching and an incredible level of character detail, should drive a game that really feels like an interactive movie. Microsoft showed a rolling demo of Halo 2 (scheduled for early 2004), plus an Xbox version of CounterStrike, and announced that Doom 3 will come to the Xbox. Ubi Soft's cel-animated XIII and innovative shoot-'em-up Far Cry also caught the eye.
There were mixed fortunes for the three next-generation console manufacturers. Sony unveiled an updated version of the PlayStation 2 with enhanced DVD playback and bundled online hardware. But Sony says it has no plans to launch it in the UK. The PlayStation 2's online service will launch on June 11, however. The biggest PlayStation 2 games on show were the innovative UK-developed Eye Toy, a selection of mini-games played by gesture recognition, courtesy of a video-camera add-on for the PS2 (available at the beginning of July) and Gran Turismo 4. Sony also announced that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and the next version of Grand Theft Auto will both be available on the PlayStation first. Two-thirds of Metal Gear Solid 3 will be set in the jungle and, this time around, gameplay will derive from Solid Snake's need to select the correct camouflage clothing and replenish energy by eating snakes, berries and other flora and fauna.
Of the console manufacturers, Microsoft was generally thought to have the strongest line-up of titles for this Christmas. Project Gotham 2 is every bit the graphical equal of Gran Turismo 4. The first fruits of its purchase of Rare Software - action-adventure game Kameo, online game Conker: Live And Uncut and the cute-looking game with the dodgy name, Grabbed By The Ghoulie - had mass appeal. Microsoft also showed a fantastic-looking tennis game, Top Spin, a real-time role-playing game called Sudeki, which should give Final Fantasy XI, due for the PlayStation 2, a run for its money, and Peter Molyneux's ground-breaking RPG Fable.
Nintendo, by contrast, seemed troubled. It has recently been soundly beaten into third place in the console wars by Microsoft. Nintendo's resident genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, is working on a game entitled Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, which will take the best aspects from Metal Gear Solid versions one and two. Miyamoto also announced a tie-in with Sims creator Will Wright which will generate a version of The Sims in which the Game Boy Advance and GameCube will hook up to each other. Show consensus agreed that Mario Kart for the GameCube was disappointing, although futuristic racer F-Zero GX looked stunning. Nintendo's press conference made no mention of Mario 128 - which Miyamoto had spoken about prior to the show - and Nintendo tried to deny that Sony's technologically superior PSP will threaten the Game Boy Advance.
As ever, a trawl around E3's noisy and crowded show floor uncovered some interesting games and technologies from a diverse range of publishers.
· BBC Multimedia showed its first innovative product, Fightbox, which lets you build game characters to compete in a forthcoming TV series.
· Electronic Arts showed new multi-format versions of its big games franchises, including Medal Of Honor, Fifa Football, Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings. The Sims 2 looked stunning.
· Eidos showed the much-delayed Republic: The Revolution, as well as Thief III and Deus Ex 2. Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness, due on June 20, was the disappointment of the show.
· Multiplayer online gamers are in for some treats, courtesy of Sony's EverQuest II and Ubi Soft's ambitious The Matrix Online.
· Activision's big guns for this Christmas are the Vice City-like True Crime: Streets of LA and Tony Hawk's Underground (T.H.U.G) which, sadly, was only shown on video.
· Sony impressed with Rise To Honour for the PlayStation 2, a gritty martial-arts action game for which kung fu film-star Jet Li was motion-captured.
· Nokia showed downloadable levels for the N-Gage version of Tomb Raider. This allows players to compete against ghost images of their friends, turning Tomb Raider into a multiplayer game for the first time.
· Steve Boxer was one of a group of five journalists taken to the E3 show by Microsoft.
