E3 Surprises and Disappoints

Now that the new E3 Media and Business Summit is over, it's time to review some of the highlights and lowlights. Let's start at the top.

Console Makers: Who Won?

The short answer is that there was no clear winner based on our assessment of the three media briefings from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. All three did a fairly decent job with their press conferences by playing to their strengths, but none of them hit the ball out of the park and all of them still have some weak spots.

Microsoft touted its stack lineup of Xbox 360 and PC games scheduled for launch the second half of this year, which includes Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Assassin's Creed, BioShock and Mass Effect. Indeed, it does look like Microsoft could have a record-breaking game lineup. And watching Microsoft vice president Peter Moore jam with Rock Band was pretty cool. But the new Xbox 360 SKU - a Halo 3 special-edition console - did little to excite the audience, and the Halo live action short was weak. And Microsoft didn't announce a price cut for the Xbox 360 to counter Sony's PlayStation 3 price drop, as some were hoping. Oh, and the company is still dealing with the fallout from hardware failure rates and the dreaded red ring of death.

View E3 2007 Slideshow (16 images)

Meanwhile, Nintendo's press conference on Wednesday morning was good but far from the show-stopping spectacle it put on last year at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. The Wii dominated E3 2006, and Nintendo's press conference, with delicious demos of the Wii Remote in action on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, was a big reason why. The big question surrounding Nintendo at this year's show was, where are all the marquee Wii games? To a certain extent, Nintendo answered the question by rolling out Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Mario Galaxy, which are due before the end of the year. But Nintendo spent more time talking about its DS games lineup and the WiiFit and Balance Board than big-name titles for the console. And while the Wii Zapper looked good during the press conference, the new controller didn't perform as well as I had hoped.

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto holds up the new Wii Balance Board during the E3 media briefing.

As for Sony, the company definitely improved on last year's lackluster media briefing at E3. The unveiling of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and the new shooter Killzone 2 definitely got the crowd interested. Both titles look like the kind of games that PS3 owners have been waiting for. And Sony also spent some time promoting the PlayStation Network and the new PlayStation Home feature. But there wasn't a whole lot to get excited about here, either. For one, Sony already announced PlayStation Home during the Game Developer Conference in March. And the company ended up spending a lot of time on a new PSP model, which looks great but let's be honest - the PSP is losing badly to the Nintendo DS, so why is Sony spending all this time trying to promote its handheld console while billions of dollars are riding on the PS3 and its Blu-ray initiative? And seriously, Chewbacca?

The biggest problem here is that Sony, unlike Microsoft, just didn't showcase enough big titles for its console. When titles like Warhawk and Heavenly Sword - which were previewed at last year's E3 - are wheeled out again as part of the PS3's mighty lineup, you know there are issues (for more, read Travis' take on Sony's press conference).

But the worst part for Sony came after the press conference, when it was revealed that the PS3's supposed price drop was really just a bait-and-switch tactic: while the 60 GB PS3 will be available for $499 instead of the original $599 price tag, once those 60 GB models run out, only the new 80 GB PS3 will be available in the U.S. The 80 GB console, by the way, has a price tag of $599. So that's not much of a price cut, is it now?

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