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It wasn’t all games at E3 2009
The summer Electronic Entertainment Expo returned to its roots of glitz, glamour and huge booths this year, forgoing the attempts of the last three years to make it look like a business (heck, anything that generates billions of dollars in this economy can call itself whatever it wants in my book). But it wasn’t just games this time around; hardware is going to be making the biggest splash because of how things will be changed. Want three examples? First up, the worst kept secret of the event, Sony’s PSP Go. It differs from what came before because it doesn’t take those UMD discs for gaming or viewing films. 
Removing the drive mechanism eliminates girth, and a pop-out game pad makes it easy to grip, but the big deal is that it uses 16GB of built-in storage for holding games and music and other stuff. This becomes a game-changer since now you can directly access the PlayStation network and download games, not having to go to a store or pay for all that cardboard and plastic. Not to mention that you can download movies and TV shows too – who cares if you have a PS3 now, eh? Sony won’t be cutting its ties to the existing hand held anytime soon, but there’s no denying that moving away from the expense and costs of physical discs will pay off down the road.
And for number two you got to check out, as I did, D-Box’s GPS-120. These are the guys who give you motors in furniture you sit on, then pop in a movie that has the code so that when things move onscreen, well, so do you. Only now it’s a self contained seat with up to two Gs of simulated acceleration to make racing or flying games wild. Of course, for what they charge it should be, but you can play movies too, so it’s a lot of bang – or 
should that be shake? – for the buck.
The third example was rocking E3 hard: DJ Hero. Taking the popular music franchise off the guitar and transferring it to a turntable, is what. Besides looking à¼ber-cool, it’s coming with tunes from Jay-Z and Eminem, and maker Activision says it will go far into the realm of scratchin’ and blending and pulling out all the stops as the crowd goes wild. If we had the bucks for sure we’d go with the deluxe set that includes the travelling case that turns into a DJ performance stand. And if this makes you feel old just to hear it, then yeah, you are old, sorry.
Okay, one extra example that runs on a PC, not game console, that I found in a 
conference room far off from the show floor. Yoostar gives you a green screen background and a digital webcam so that you can run the software to insert yourself into clips from commercial movies. The example I was given had me taking over the part of Jim Belushi, getting into the Blues Brothers car and reading off his dialogue with Dan Aykroyd. The finished product looks amazing and it’s definitely a different way to spend your time, especially since everything is tied into an online community and movie scenes that can be downloaded for use.
MARSHAL M. ROSENTHAL
Posted by Tone on August 17th, 2009 in Articles
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