Got to try the Wii controller which I must say felt quite odd and nonsensical. Probably one of those things that a "non-gamer" will just
pick up on the fly, but takes some time for an old gamer to adjust to (like going from Mac to Windows, or vice versa). It was more fun look at other people using it than actually using it myself. The good news are ofcourse that it can use the GameCube controller and the price.
The graphics were a little troubling. From the
titles they had there right now (the new Zelda,
Metroid, some driving game and a bunch of tech demos)
it really looks like GameCube 1.5. I know that you
should never judge the potential of a device by it's
first titles but if you look back, "next gen" has
always look like it too (compare going from SNES to
N64 or any other transition).
The PS3 is a perfect example of this. Even a Nintendo
fanboy like myself, I must say I was more impressed
by the PS3's visuals than the Wii controller. They
had 4 demo units, 3 of them running at 720p and one
1080p and it did look quite stunning. The games were
Lair, two obscure driving games and a shoot-em-up.
You could really see that the PS3 camp's behind by
the quality of the games though - for example the
physics and handling on both of the driving games was
practically non-existant.
All this HD glory will come at price, ofcourse. Not
only will we have to dish out close to 700 EUR for
the PS3, but keep in mind you also need an HD screen
to take real advantage of it. And those start at
around 1 000 EUR (?).
The XBox 360 was the most polished of them all
(obviously) and they had a lot of them out there. Got
to try NFS Carbon, which although undeniable
impressive in HD, didn't feel that much greater than
NFS MW running on the GameCube. In fact the sense of
speed is even better IMHO on the GC, but that
might've been because I had a crummy car. :)
Gears of War looked impressive. It's nice to see how
console makers have finally really figured out it's
all about the content. The games are the reason
people buy a console (and maybe the BluRay player in
case of the PS3) and so all of the platforms now have
their exclusive hit-games that aren't ported to a
competing platform. The result? I think more and more
people will just end up buying more than one console.
Oh, just for the record. I did buy something!