Two weeks ago I was in San Diego for a much needed vacation. Coincidentally, the same week in LA was the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) which is one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world. My brother happens to have a gaming website which was invited to attend the event. Well, since we were going to be in Cali anyways, we decided to drive up to LA for one of the four days the convention was going on. We had never been to E3 before so we were going in without any expectations at all.

We started the morning at 9am at the Kodak Theater, w.h.e.r.e the Academy Awards are held, for the Nintendo press briefing. The presentation was pretty cool with announcements about the Wii's balance board, Shaun White Snowboarding (whom we actually ran into later at the convention center), GTA: China Town for the DS, and Wii Sports Resort which utilizes the new Wii Motion Plus, its a more advanced motion detector for the Wii remote.





Next, we herded onto buses which we thought were destined for the LA Convention Center, instead we ended up at The Shrine, which is w.h.e.r.e. the Academy Awards and The Emmy's have taken place, for the Playstation Press Briefing. We were not registered for this briefing, we were not on 'the list', but somehow managed to talk our way in despite news cameras being turned away. Way flashier than the Nintendo briefing and lots of cool stuff talked about which almost convinced me to want a PS3which urge I have been fighting atleast until GOW3 comes out. Resistance II, GOW3, DC Universe, Little Big World, and MAG (Massive Action Gamesupports up to 256 players online) were some of the announcements and more talked about games in the briefing. Oh yeah, did I mention there was an open bar before this event, it was 10:30am...w00t!





After the PS briefing we had already missed our first appointments at the convention center, but we were still in a rush to grab a bite to eat and make our next lined up demos/interviews. Once we got to the convention center we started to absorb the overwhelming amount of information/publishers/developers/companies that were present. One big showcase room was dozens of kiosks with three or four 37'-42' setup with all the big games being released. Rock Band 2, Resistance II, Wii Sport's Resort, Wii Music, Lego Batman, and Skate It! were some of the games available for demo. Additional to the massive gaming going on it that room, they were also filming G4 Tv's Attack of the Show live in the same room with Olivia Munn. They had live feeds for G4 with Morgan Webb at each of the press briefings we had just attended as well. Outside of the showcase room were hallways similar to school hallways with rooms with a different company inside each. When we entered we needed an appointment to see their games and talk to them, we made our rounds to some of our missed appointments from earlier trying to play catch up. We headed to EA's room w.h.e.r.e. we had a hands-on-demo of Rock Band 2 scheduled. After the guys from Harmonix showed us most of the new stuff and all the new songs in the game, we were allowed to get on stage and rock our faces off with the third party peripherals that are being released by MadCatz and Alesis. The Alesis drum kit is a real electronic drum kit that can be unplugged from the system and connected to an Alesis drum brain which will allow the drums to be a 100% fully functional drum kit. MadCatz has new Fender guitars that much more resemble a real guitar. All of the third party items are not sold with the game and are much more expensive, $200 for guitars and $300 for the drum kit, and additional $350 for the drum brain.







^ That's me rocking my face off in the middle playing 'Everlong' by the Foo Fighters on hard with the guys from Harmonix on the left and right. I didn't do so bad for never playing with a Rock Band guitar before. Here is a short video clip of the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxUqBNNr7QU

Well, that was pretty much it. We saw a lot of other games, too many to list and I've already typed an essay. There were lots more pictures I am trying to get from my bro, including bigger images since all of these came off his facebook which he resized for some reason, except one.

BTW, all those people that say hot chics don't play games, *****, yeah right. Next year we are going for the full event since there is sooooo much information to take it, and then I'm going to just take pics of all the girls so I can just write a story on hot chics and gaming.

If you want more info about this event, my brother has some more details on his site, just check my sig for a linky.

 

you lucky SOB...ive ALWAYS wanted to go to E3...although i have read that they've toned it down in recent years...still LUCKY BASTARD!!!

 

i concur with can't man...i told my wife...at SOME point i WILL go to E3...you luck SOB...i am a diehard gamer (or at least i used to be)...e3 is the holy mecca of gaming...(or at least it used to be[&:]).....

i reiterate...you suck, and i am horribly jealous!

 

haha, yeah, it used to be open invites, anyone could attend. When the expo started reaching 70,000-75,000 people they toned it down to invite only.It was a blast, I bought rock band the day I got back to Texas, LOL.

 

SUCK = rrasco....

i'm out....[:'(]

 

I concur... you officially suck now.

 

E3 FTW!

 

ok, ok, I officially = the suck.

 

I watched it on G4 and I was completely unimpressed with the Nintendo show. no big games and trying to build basically around Sean White and more hardware was pretty lame. Other than that it was cool to watch the Xbox and PS presentations.

 

Agreed, the Nintendo was no match for PS. I didn't see MS press briefing as it was on Monday, we went on Tuesday.