It's May, It's L.A., It's E3...

Well, another May has come to our greedy little tech and gamer hands and it's time for another installment of E3!  The pre-show conferences have already started, developers, designers, and CEO's have started touting how great they all are for the year of 2006 and beyond.  Soon Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will bring the thousands of industry insiders and crazed fans alike to feast on the pixelated glamor.  So let's begin the fun!
    The PS3 pre-show started with a slight bang as the official pricing was released for the U.S. market, the new, err, old, umm, well the controller was presented and a look at a PS3 game in motion was unveiled to the crowd.  The PS3 will be starting at $499 for the lower grade 20 gig version, which has many less bells and whistles than its $599 60 gig bigger brother.  The official release date has been set at November 17th 2006.  Now to start ripping on Sony.  Poor Sony (not so much) had what most people are considering to be a lack-luster performance at best.  They stuck the price of the PS3 higher than most gamers were wanting to spend, then when everyone got sight of the actual rundown of features for the two systems, the audience was let down when it was realized that the $499 20 gig version of the PS3 will not include slots for memory cards, will not include HDMI support, and will not have Wi-Fi capabilities.  So... you're going to be getting what again?  It seems the only rational choice for the PS3 will be the inflated $599 version (at least then you'll be getting everything you should be getting originally, regardless of price break).
    If the two versions of the system weren't enough to leave your head shaking in disappointment, they then had to whip out the "new" PS3 controller.  Which as you can see... ain't new at all!!!  Let's see, oh!  It looks as though Sony has come up with a totally new and previously completely unimagined motion sensor for their "new" controller!  (expect Nintendo suit shortly)  The only problem with the said motion control added to the controller?  How about they had to remove all rumble (dual shock) features to the controller due to the fact that it interfered with the motion sensor.  So, not only does it seem they might have "borrowed" the idea of movement control but it doesn't really work well enough to evolve the video game experience, rather it's going to take away part of the advancements they had already made with the dual shock.  Boo Sony, boo.  The controller will be wireless and will have the ability to connect to the system via USB wire for play and recharging.  Other than that, there's not much to report.  The L2 and R2 buttons are bigger.  There are four lights on the top of the controller between the shoulder buttons suggesting four controllers can be used at a time.  And there was something that looked pretty damn close to a "guide" button in the center of the controller between the start and select buttons a la Xbox360 controller style.  Overall, Sony gets a C- for their pre-show conference at this time.  But they always have a humongous booth, if you can even call their football field sized monument a booth anymore, chock full of games and gadgets so they have chance to redeem themselves come show floor time in the next three days.
    Well boys and girls, welcome to the first post on E3 this year, and stay tuned for more articles, blogs, photos, and what's this? is it possibly video?  Stay tuned all as E3 hits the world for 2006.