Before I get into the whole spiel with hands-on impressions, allow me to boldly state that Sony saved this year's E3. Call me whatever you want for saying this, but after Microsoft's terrible conference and Nintendo's snoozefest, Sony was the only company who had a conference worth watching. Bit after bit, it was exciting news all around. You had the revelation of WipeOut HD, the drool inducting new video of Gran Turismo, the absurdly awesome Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer, Killzone 2, Unreal Tournament III being a timed-exclusive, the slimmer PSP, and everything in between. The crowd was genuinely interested in everything Sony was saying, and the content we were treated to was definitely the best of any conference by far.
I was a little surprised that Sony made no mention of an all new vibrating PS3 controller, but perhaps they've got something up their sleeves and we'll have to wait a bit more until we see it. The best part about it all was that after the conference ended, to the right of the room was a door that allowed us to walk into the next stage. And that stage Sony called the arcade, and it allowed us to sample dozens of different games, both 1st and 3rd party. The arcade was terrific, and it was Sony's homage to the spirit of E3 and its grandiosity. There was plenty of kiosks to play on, and the game lineup featured all of Sony's featured first party titles for E3, in addition to surprises like Unreal Tournament III, Time Crisis 4, Sega Rally Revo, and others.
There is no doubt about it, but Sony stole this show with a landslide victory and if it wasn't for their solid conference and arcade game lounge thereafter, this may very well have been a disaster for me. Unfortunately, the selection of games for the entire show is quite slim. I got my hands on 18 games, and from there on, I didn't see much that I had to cover. At most, there are another 10-15 games out there for me to play (a lot of which are only displayed on an Xbox 360 kiosk), and that's a drastic difference compared to almost 100 from years before. Now with that out of the way, enjoy the impressions.