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Anyhow, the PS3 gamepad maintains the proven PS2 form-factor with a few changes. Rumble feedback has been replaced with 6-axis tilt sensors, and there's now a central PlayStation button.

Gran Turismo HD looks great and it's basically Gran Turismo 4 with high-resolution textures and a 1080p framebuffer. It basically looks just like the photo mode from GT4, only in 60fps motion. I'd be happy to buy a PlayStation 3 just to play this one game and as a Blu-Ray player. The rest of the PS3 demos didn't look substantially better than Xbox 360, but they seemed to be running at very smooth framerates.

Since I was already on the second floor platform, I took the time to take some shots of the Sony booth. Yeah, I noticed that Gran Turismo HD was also down on the show floor … it's a good thing I didn't wait an hour.




Across from the Sony booth was Nintendo. Dozens of people enjoyed the Nintendo DS lounge, and even more people were waiting for a preview of Wii. The wait was supposedly 5 or 6 hours. Way too long for me… especially since the tilt/motion type control has been done before.


Both GameSpot and 1up had huge on-site booths where they did real-time coverage of E3 including video and written content. While Ziff Davis's 1up.com was built off Ziff Davis's Gamers.com, only Gamespot gets a photo because that's where FiringSquad alums James Yu and Bob Colayco are working (Sarju Shah too… but I didn't run into him).


I had heard a lot about EA's 360 degree surround screen and how awesome it was. After seeing it in person, I can say that it's just like the ones you see at one of the Disney theme parks… only EA's is smaller.