I didn't go, but I followed it online and my former boss went and give me details. I've been to every E3 up until this year. It just seems like year after year, there is less and less. The only "big" years is when a system debuts.

I think that the economy is tougher combined with companies realizing that handing out a bunch of nice stuff to people does nothing to help sales of their products.

I bet much more than 75% of the people who attend either have no buying authority at their company or do not even work in the industry.

Why give a nice shirt out to someone who is a cashier at Best Buy?

I am sure the Parties still gave out nice things. Plus I am sure real Media members or company execs are brought behind the scenes and given things.

The masses get leaflets and key chains.

do you mean swag? or games to be released?

I just assumed swag

He meant games I'm assuming.

It did seem like a fairly boring E3.

There's a lot of games coming out that sound great, but all the ones I'm interested in were announced well before E3.

There were no "big surprises" that caught my eye.

I agree somewhat. Nothing really earthshattering for me personally (Halo 2 and HL2 looks great, but, didn't seem to wow me like I thought they would).

The game that really made me want to buy it on release day, believe it or not.... is Gradius V. Treasure made Gradius, damn, the footage is unbelievable, but I love shooters, heh.

SNK is back, and making some good ports for PS2, that's good news (but I have the original games already so it is less important to me).

I am very disappointed in Sega, virtually nothing interesting except FZero.

Still, I thought it was a lot more stuff than last year. Last year seemed like the slowest and least crowded in terms of attendance. I'm not up on the games, but wasn't last year the official release of the Xbox and Game Cube. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but Xbox was big the year before last when it was previewed.

All I really noticed this year was better character models.. especially in the sports games.

yeah, I'm talking about games, guys. I heard the freebies sucked this year too.

The only games I am looking forward to are the ones I knew about before the show began: Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Halo 2.

I don't think there were any surprises this year.

The worst was the GBA showing. The amount of quality games for it can be counted in one hand. It's *atrocious*. Moreover, there's more shovelware coming - Mario Advance 4, Aladdin, Magizal Quest 2....Zzzzzz.... I was thinking that I would get the SP, but looking at the lineup, I'd prefer to wait 1+ years for the PSP.

I'm now really glad Sony is getting into the portable market, because Nintendo's monopoly has seriously reduced the quality of GBA games drastically. Maybe this will make them realize how much they've been cruising by lately.

I doubt Sony's handheld will have that much impact in the hand held market. Nintendo has ruled it with a iron fist for over 10 years. The amount of games they have behind them far spans any list of games that all the big systems right now have combined. the most important part of it all.. they all work with each other and the name Game Boy is well stamped as the item for hand held fun.

All things that could have been said pre-launch of the PSX.

This will hurt Gameboy and Nintendo.

Think about just the spillover from the largest install based console the PS2 to the new handheld. That alone will be pretty big. Then think if they get creative with the system link capability, etc.

I'm not saying that Nintendo will go down or anything like that, but Sony will bring it to them when they enter the handheld market.

And I am in no way a Sony Fanboy, as I do not own a PS2 (but do have an X-Box, a GC and a GBA, currently)

Nintendo better be prepared for the challenge.

I think it's a quit time for the industry. In the last 20 years there has been a lot of consolidation into a few large players and like movies, there is more bad then good. Once in a while you get something original.

This was a pretty huge E3 to impress the PC gamers or anyone that is not a PC gamer. hehe. STALKER, Far Cry, Doom III, and Half-Life 2...

But yeah, if you were looking for console titles, nothing much to see there. Halo 2 for xbox, MGS3 for ps2, and Mario Kart and Rogue Leader 3 for GC was about it.

Obviously Nintendo could counter with a portable that runs N64 quality games and port those over. Also, they could still use the cartridge format for that since the technology since then has been better. The big question is whether developers will flock to the developer friendly Sony handheld or stick it out with Nintendo. I've heard that the GBA is a huge money loser for companies that release games that aren't huge sellers. It wouldn't surprise me to see Sony dominate the handheld market pretty quickly just like they did with the PS1.

Nintendo has been so dominate in this market that this is one of those "see to believe" things with me.

I'd agree with that and I think you will see Sony lure many developers over. Developers will definitely go where the money and potential is. Also, I'm sure Sony has quite a bit of persuasive power over developers since they have such a huge install base with the PS2. Sony will most certainly make it worth the developers while to support their handheld product as they move into that market.

Also, I think competition in the handheld market will be a good thing. Gamers will see better games, with better prices, etc.

In a day and age when teens have Ps2's in there cars video equipment, I often wonder whats the point in Sony offering a handheld.

I think Sony's handheld will offer a clear alternative to the GBA. It will be an adult gaming system which will function as a multimedia PDA to boot. The home-brew opportunities alone are impressive.

I thought this E3 was good for games. No earth shattering announcements, but thanks to all of the Gamespot Complete video content, I'm excited. There are several games on each system that I am looking forward to.

Next year will be something else though...

why will next year be something else? Maybe I'm just living for the moment, but I'm looking forward to the stuff coming out this year more so then next.

as for Sony's new hand held, like someone else said.. I'll believe it when I see it. I don't think anything could disrupt Nintendo's grip on handhelds.

I guess I'm the only one who thought this E3 had alot of great games to show. Xbox had way more titles than last time and many of them were really quite impressive looking. I thought Nintendo also had more games, but as someone said they didn't really look like much compared to last year in terms of how many people were going into Nintendo's booth to check them out. It certainly was more of a PC gamer's E3 which is something I like. RPG and MMORPG fans had alot to see. There were some big announcements. EA almost abandoning Xbox, price drops, long awaited titles, etc... The only thing that wasn't as good as last year was the celebs and the booth girls... and if that's why you go, then you probably don't belong there. (not that anyone here goes just because of those reasons).

I think most have said there were a lot of great games shown, it's just that all most all of them were announced before the show, so there were no surprises.

That's where my dissapointment (in following online came from). I was hoping to see a slew of big new games revealed, and there was nothing revealed that interested me.

But still, I am excited for all the great games coming out later this year.

Hell yeah, this was definitely the year of the PC. Doom 3, Half Life 2, Deus Ex 2, Thief 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Prince of Persia (I'm hopeful). I want to make sweet, sweet love to them all.

E3 is pretty much an anachronism these days. Its age has passed.

Once upon a time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and no one had the Internet, it was really hard to find out what new video games were coming out. Hence big trade shows like E3 (or, at the time, CES) made sense: it was an organized way to spread the news about games that, quite often, even industry insiders hadn't heard about until the show started.

Nowadays any videogame junkie worth his salt has a bunch of game sites bookmarked and checks them regularly. Game makers know this and keep those game sites fed with a constant flow of news year round.

Which is why E3 these days seems like an anticlimax: it's just officially announcing a bunch of stuff that everyone already read about on line ages ago.