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Joe:
Well, it was Sony's chance to instill confidence in those who have invested in the their truly "next gen" console, but they fell a little short. To much footage of Home which may or may not turn out to be a hit. Plenty of footage of games that we either knew were coming out or aren't exclusive to the Playstation 3.

The one piece of news that should have been in Sony's favor was that Hideo Kojima reassured that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots will be a Playstation 3 exclusive. However, MGS games always go multiplatform, I just wonder how long after it's release MGS4 will appear on the 360. Sony ended with Killzone 2, which looks good, but it's very apparent they are trying to take a mediocre franchise to the A list. Sony is still on shaky ground.

Sean:
I wanted Sony to blow me away this year. I needed fireworks, awesome exclusives, some sign to convince me that PS3 is worth as much or more than 360. And although I know that its hard for any company to keep anything secret these days, I still hoped for something huge. And while there were a few spots during Sony's press conference that piqued my interest, overall I would have to say I am not very impressed with what they brought to the table. Maybe when Sony heard that E3 was going to be scaled back this year, they figured they should scale back their offerings.

The PSP showed me some stuff that made me think that maybe its time for a second handheld device. Kind of a little brother for my DS. They're releasing a lighter and slimmer PSP in October. There will also be a bundle package of a PSP with a Darth Vader silhouette on the back (awesome) and a copy of a PSP exclusive Star Wars: Battleground (totally freaking awesome). Then there was Echochrome, which looks like a really fun and absorbing puzzle game. It has a little stick figure guy walking around M.C. Escher inspired worlds, which you have to move on multiple axises in order to finish the puzzles.

Then we got to the meat of the issue, the PS3 portion of the presentation. This was it, this was where they were going to win me over and show me that it was time for me to shell out the $400 and get it over with. I was hoping for exclusives, amazing graphics, visuals like I've never seen before.

And what did I, and all of us, get? Here's some highlights:

Haze- A Halo-inspired, uninspired-looking FPS in which you play a character that wears bright yellow plates on his Master Chi... er, original armor. Bright yellow flourescent plates in a dark battlezone. Yeah.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction- Is this really the best use of Blu-ray?

Madden '08- Since we've already heard that PS3 will scan at 30fps, vs. 360's 60fps, where's the benefit here?

Home- Sony didn't miss a single opportunity to show off Home, their 3-D, avatar based network. Imagine XBL meets Second Life. You could also call it The Sims. It was almost embarrassing how much time was spent talking about, or in Home. All of the executives who spoke on-stage were also "immortalized" in creepy animated form. It was... okay.

That's the thing about the whole Sony demo. I wanted great. I got okay. And that's, somehow, not okay.

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