Neowin.net

This year, I'll be covering E3 for Neowin. This is my seventh E3 but this year may prove to be the most exciting at all. The next-gen consoles are moving to high definition and have the hardware to really exploit it.

Meanwhile, the handhelds look pretty exciting as well as Nintendo and Sony battle it out for your gaming dollars.

And don't count out the PC world yet either.

We're going to be putting together daily reports on what's happening at E3. We'll try to put together reports that are a lot less formal than what you may find elsewhere to give you the next best thing to being there yourself.

You can view the full daily journal for E3, TotalGaming.net.

View: E3 Day 1 at TotalGaming.net

Cont...

Particularly impressive though was the volume of new franchises. We'll bring you more details on them all shortly, but SCEJ's Eyedentify was particularly impressive - a game that involves being the operator, your EyeToy-ed face splattered over comms devices and PC screens in-game, and talking to two very saucy female assassin-esque protagonists; as was WarHawks, with its fleets of aeroplanes and floating aircraft carriers streaming across the sky.

But the biggest impression was probably left by MotorStorm from UK-based Evolution, which threw so much mud and so many explosions at the viewer that we lost count. Mud would splatter the screen, the guy would glance at the speedometer, the wipers would come on - only for a bike to land on the windshield and the car to be propelled through the air and explode, and the camera move on to the next one. Hyperbole is inevitable, but it's difficult to express just how "exhilarating", "jaw-dropping" and all the rest this stuff really is in light of what we're used to on the current generation of machines.

In addition to what's on the list below, we also saw KOEI pledge two further games, Factor 5 talking about their support, and video of an as-yet untitled Rockstar game that smacked very heavily of Red Dead Revolver. Grand Theft Auto was alluded to at one point by Kaz Hirai, who said that it would be fascinating to see where franchises born on PlayStation (including GTA, Metal Gear and Gran Turismo) went next, but Rockstar and Sony stopped short of full confirmation.

Finally, while Square Enix showed off a video of the PS2's Final Fantasy XII (and spoke of a "fiscal 2006" release date), and pledged to take Final Fantasy to PlayStation 3, the highlight from them was a tech demo of the introduction to Final Fantasy VII shot in real-time on PS3, with Advent Children levels of detail. Square Enix is not remaking it, Yoichi Wada told us, but the audience certainly appreciated the sentiment.

The following list represents the full software line-up, most of which appeared in video form to some extent. We'll link to screenshots of as many of them as possible shortly.

Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom)
Eyedentify (SCEJ)
Fifth Phantom Saga (SEGA)
Fight Night Round 3 (EA Sports)
Final Fantasy (Square Enix)
Formula 1 (Liverpool Studio)
The Getaway "Screen Test" (Team Soho)
Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory)
I-8 (Insomniac)
Killing Day (Ubisoft)
KillZone (Guerrilla)
Metal Gear Solid 4 (Konami)
Mobile Suit Gundamn (Bandai)
MotorStorm (Evolution Studio)
NioH (KOEI)
Oni (KOEI)
Tekken (Namco)
Vision Gran Turismo (Polyphony Digital)
WarHawk (Incognito)