From Joystiq: It took a little wrangling since we didn’t have an appointment, but we managed to blag our way into the backroom where Sony had three genuine PlayStation 3 consoles on display. Click on for a bunch more pics.

 

Batman! While it’s great to see the Batmobile, it would be even better to see a fine Batman game. Hopefully I’ll find the latest BM effort somewhere in this maze. The E3 floor is as crazy today as it was yesterday. Don’t these people get tired? Here are some shots of our tireless peers in their seventh heaven.

 

Day Three! Here’s our recap of yesterday’s coverage:

Interview

• The Engadget & Joystiq Interview: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft
  

Hardware

• Picture the Revolution
• A Funny PS3 Shot
• Nintendo @ E3: Hands on with the Game Boy Micro
• Nokia @ E3 - N-Gage capable smartphones
• E3 floor show coverage
  

Games

• City of Villains Site Launched with Details
• Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS is two screens of blue
• Ridiculously hi-res DOA4 movie
• More Metal Gear than you can handle
• Hands-on with Starcraft Ghost
• Dead to Rights 2 gets Netjakked
• Hands on with Sony Station Exchange: Bring on the Real Money Trade
• Hands on with Kingdom Hearts II
• Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge
• Return of the King… Of weird games that is
• Quake 4 is already big
• E3: Call of Duty 2 for Xbox 360 duly impresses

Previously

• Live from E3: Day One - PS3 and Xbox 360
• Live from E3: Day Two

 Tons of photos and details from the Playstation 3 press conference over at Engadget.

Steve Ballmer was interviewed by our sister site Joystiq last night. He gives up a ton of deets on future version of the XBOX 360.

More details about the XBOX 360 can be found at the live press conference coverage.

This year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, Yahoo! Games is expected to debut a mobile interface to the current web portal’s poker games. Yahoo! Poker will let cellphone users play against people on other handsets or sitting at their PCs linked up through a regular internet connection. This cross-platform application “lets people play friends anytime, anywhere and on any device.”

Well, time to start up the E3 engine again. May 17th 2005 begins this year’s E3 expo. Register here. See you there.

After recent coverage of the Infinium Labs Phantom gaming system, I’ve been watching for other subscription-based video game products. I didn’t expect to see it from a cable TV company though.

Comcast said that for a separate monthly fee of $14.95, subscribers would have unlimited access to more than 60 PC-based games, from mainstream titles to educational software. New titles will be added each month, the company said.

Also, Comcast recently acquired TechTV and will apparantly keep the gaming shows on the air. The games service will mix content from G4techTV.

The new G4techTV remains focused primarily on games, and Comcast said clips and other features from the channel would be available as part of the new games service, which runs on systems developed by Exent Technologies.

This sounds like good news for gamers on Comcast. I just hope they will carry worthwhile games. With all that bandwidth available, I’d hate for it to be focused on fare worthy of the computer store bargain bin.

Sony and IBM are working on a Cell-based workstation for content creators, according to this Gamesindustry.biz story.

Cell is the parallel processing chip (a “supercomputer on a chip” according to this CNET story from 2002) that is being produced by Sony, IBM and Toshiba that was annouced back in 2001. It is going power not only the Playstation 3, but other consumer devices. The companies earmarked $400 million for Cell’s development.

From the Gamesindustry story:

”Microsoft should be really worried by this,” one developer told us today. “They’ve been touting Xbox 2 to their partners and talking about the kind of content they want to see created on the platform - more polygons, higher resolutions, more effects - and our response has been that the tools to create this stuff for games don’t really exist yet. Now Sony has effectively created those tools.”

ExtremeTech, the brand under which I wrote my new book, is blogging E3. I think the unusual perspective from ExtremeTech editors will bring a wide diversity of articles and viewpoints from the show. I especially like the up-front attitude expressed in the following snippet:

It’s not always fun or glamorous being at E3. After a couple of days, the feet start to hurt, the throbbing beat from the loud music becomes a throbbing headache and your eyes begin to itch from all the flashing lights and artificial fog. But E3 is about fun, the fun that will be delivered in the coming year or two on game consoles, handheld devices and your PC.

I’m going to the show to meet old friends and new and listen to some 8-bit music. It will also be interesting to see some of the follow-ons to my favorite genres like shooting games, driving games, and my favorite: Shooting-while-driving games. But I feel the same way as the ET folks after a while. You can only stand next to people dressed up like aliens, apes, and stormtroopers for so many days in a row before going batty.

Ferrago.com is reporting from E3 and has some news on the Sony Platstation Portable Unit, including a bunch of photos.

David Smith at 1UP has coverage of Sony’s E3 press conference as well.

1UP reports that they spotted games in a video Sony played “like Death Jr., Hot Shots Golf, Frogger, an unidentified beachball game, a Tales game from Namco, Ape Escape, Armored Core, Syphon Filter, Spider-Man, MediEvil, Dynasty Warriors, Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, Tony Hawk, Darkstalkers, Wild Arms, and Metal Gear Solid.”

Nintendo has released information on their portable gaming platform, the Nintendo DS (below). Again, Ferrago has details and photos. UP1.COM has a list of games for the DS.

Gamespot has a hands on review of the DS. 

Our own Peter Rojas has some thoughts on the PSP.

I’m looking for some folks to help me blog E3… who’s in?

Let me know.