E3 made me a coveteous sinner
E3–more formally known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo–is in full swing. The fine folks over at Engadget have been doing a great job covering it. This year is exciting because the big three videogame manufacturers are introducing us to their new systems: The X-Box 360, the Nintendo Revolution, and the Playstation 3.
The Revolution has an interesting feature, although not well explained: “All-Access Gaming, which refers to backwards compatibility to 20 years of Nintendo games, NES, SNES, N64. We don’t know particulars of how it’ll be accessed or what, if any, the cost structure might be.”
Apparently it will be able to download old games off of their network and play them, in addition to being able to play GameCube games off of the discs. This is brilliant, I say.
The Revolution also has an Secure Digital memory card slot, just like a lot of cameras and PDA’s use, and two USB ports. And wireless controllers. The bad news: It’s not coming until 2006.
Also, the other Nintendo product I really want, coming out later this year: The Gameboy Micro:
It’s basically a Gameboy Advance in a smaller package with a backlight. The unit is about the size of an iPod mini–4 inches long by two inches wide by .7 inches thick. I don’t own a GBA yet, so I might go for this, if it’s cheap enough. (I’ve just discovered the joys of Advanced Wars on my brother’s GBA, but I need a backlight.)
All kinds of neat stuff coming.
Oh, speaking of cool gadgets: The PalmOne LifeDrive comes out tomorrow. It’s a PDA running the Palm operating system (which I love)–but it has a 4 GB hard drive built in. I predict this thing will make a killer personal video player, if *someone* makes decent video software for the Palm sometime.
It also has Bluetooth and WiFi and a 416 mHz processor, which is nearly twice as fast as my Clie TJ-37 is. I’m gonna have to wait for the price to come down a little though–it starts at $500. Not an unfair price–I paid $300 for my Clie, and you’d pay in the neighborhood of $200 for a 4gb iPod mini–but I can’t see myself spending the money on something I don’t need at the moment.
So… put some money in the tipjar so I can get this stuff. Thanks!