Wii3

This past week has been the annual descent into madness that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, aka E3.

This is where all of the companies pull out the stops and show the gaming world what is coming in the next year or so.

The big news this year was the unveiling of both the new PS3 and the Nintendo Wii (aka the Revolution).

Bad news first: The PS3 is ludicrously expensive. I'm talking about a console that will be retailing for $650 Canadian. Yarg. I'm sure that it'll be a nice console, hardware-wise, but there was nothing that really seemed interesting with regards to any of the games. Not only that, but I haven't seen any hands-on impressions of PS3 games so you can't gauge how their DualShake controller will work.

Speaking of the DualShake, it's essentially the current Dualshock controller that everyone knows from the PS1 and PS2. Sony has taken that and removed the vibration and added tilt sensors. This means that Sony has taken the behaviours of your friend or little brother who likes to swing the controller around like it's an actual steering wheel and turned it into a game mechanic. This has been decried as Sony's blatant theft of the Wiimote style of motion sensing.. Ah well.

As for the good, nay, GREAT news, just watch anything that Nintendo did. Talk about the phoenix rising from the ashes. Just last week people were still saying that Nintendo was dead, yet they were the hit of E3 this year. Take a look at Shadow of the Mario, er, Mario Galaxy, for instance. It looks phenomenal. Plus you have a Wii enabled Zelda: Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3 at launch with Super Smash Bros. and Mario Galaxy coming out within 6 months of launch. AND there's the virtual console which lets you play games from the NES, SNES, TURBOGRAPHIX 16!!! and N64... and it's backwards compatible with the Gamecube games.

And watch the Nintendo press conference from just prior to the beginning of the expo. It is sheer joy, especially compared to the train wreck that was the Sony press conference.

Microsoft did some stuff, but it was mostly about the 360 and really didn't have anything that blew my socks off. It was all about Nintendo this year.

I was busy this week doing some stuff for Toybane and contributing to the Evil Avatar News Radio E3 Roundtable discussions for the past three nights. At least it's over and I don't have to stay up that late (doing non-gaming stuff). Check them out if you want to hear 4-5 guys (including myself) go full tilt geek.