E3 Notebook: Let the Games Begin

Editor's Note: Senior writer Troy Wolverton is in Los Angeles to attend the Electronic Entertainment Exposition -- better known as E3 -- which is the video-game industry's giant annual gathering. He's filing occasional dispatches on the sights and sounds of the show.

LOS ANGELES -- After all the excitement of last year's event -- when Sony(SNE Quote), Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Nintendo each gave gamers a peek at their next-generation machines -- you had to expect a letdown this year.

I should have sensed trouble when Kaz Hirai, president of Sony's PlayStation division in the U.S., waited nearly two hours into the company's Monday night presentation to give the details that everyone wanted to know -- when the PlayStation 3 will be launched, how much it will cost and how many Sony will ship. Let me tell you, two hours has rarely passed so slowly in my life.

It wasn't just that Hirai waited until the end to get to the point of the press event. It was that everything in between wasn't terribly compelling. Most of the game footage Sony showed was from demos at best. Few of the games generated much excitement. And the company had little to show off in the way of certain blockbuster titles. ...