Electronic Entertainment Expo: The Goods


By MARK VAUGHN

A picture of Playseats offers a wide variety of fun setups to enhance your video-gaming experience. Playseats offers a wide variety of fun setups to enhance your video-gaming experience.


Additional Resources

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Games Galore: Video games are the one growth industry in the car business

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Six questions for the creator of Gran Turismo




There were zillions of gaming aids at E3, but we only have room for three:

Sony PSP GO
This is a handheld portable game player with a slide-out screen and 16 GB of memory. We got to fondle one for a short time and liked the feel. In addition to playing games such as Gran Turismo 5, you can download music and videos. It goes on sale Oct. 1 for $250. For more, go to www.us.playstation.com/PSP.

Playseats
These offer a wide variety of cool setups to enhance your video-gaming experience, from simple steering wheels to complete racing seats with pedals and an impressive array of shifters. Check out playseats.biz.

CTA Digital Steering Wheel

Your iPhone and iPod Touch snap into the wheel and you’re cleared for fun. Visit www.ctadigital.com for more details. To read more visit the AutoWeek Car news, road tests, photos and insight section.

Posted by the BeachBum's 4 `Space..He's sleeping

 

Games Galore: Video games are the one growth industry in the car business


By MARK VAUGHN

A picture of An E3 attendee tries out the new Forza Motorsport 3 game. An E3 attendee tries out the new Forza Motorsport 3 game.

Mark Vaughn

Additional Resources

Article
Six questions for the creator of Gran Turismo

Article
Electronic Entertainment Expo: The Goods




If the movie industry was the entertainment king of the 20th century, the video-gaming industry is where disposable income is headed for the 21st century. Nowhere was this more apparent than the Electronic Entertainment Expo--E3 for short--going on right now in Los Angeles.
True, the vast majority of the games at E3 involved vixens and/or steroid-shot musclemen shooting and/or chainsawing bad guys and/or zombies. Actual zombie video-game quote overheard at E3: “And when the bullets run out, there’s always the chain saws.” (Another actual quote, “. . . and spray giant pieces of poo!”)
But there were plenty of car-related games, and that was why we went.
The first one we saw was the coming Forza Motorsport 3. We saw that one first because we, AutoWeek, are providing some content for it. The game debuts at the end of October, but could include such AutoWeek content as a Forza Challenge Cup for gamers, content for the game itself and content for Forzamotorsport.com and Xbox Live network. Microsoft Xbox 360 also is an official partner in the AW dream-trip giveaway (which ends at midnight June 15).
We got a chance to play the game itself at a demo at the Microsoft Xbox 360 booth at the show. The newest version includes updates such as more cars and better graphics, which you’d expect in a sim game (as opposed to the less-elaborate, arcade-style video games). But Forza Motorsport 3 also has new features that make it accessible to a wider range of players. A new green line can light up the quick line around the race track, for instance. There is automatic suspension-setup tuning, an auto-brake can slow your car around the track so all you have to do is steer, and if all else fails, there is a five-second button that allows you to replay the five seconds before you crashed. Use it as often as you like.
Forza Motorsports 3 also has features aimed at hardcore gamers that have so far made up the Forza audience. You get added ability to capture video, which can be posted on the Web for other gamers to see, you can set up a home video arena with up to four screens--three for the track view and one for the rearview mirror--and you can control up to 9,000 variables in setting up your car, everything from gear ratios to tire sidewall flex. Look for a price of $59.95, or the collector’s edition for $79.95.
There were other car games at E3. We had a great time driving Warner Bros.’ which offered five kinds of dirt-track racing, from rally cross to wide-open Baja. We crashed in all of them. The game will come out in September on Xbox, PS3, Wii and Nintendo DS for $59.95.
Next we drove Need For Speed Nitro, a new arcade game from Electronic Arts.
“It’s about fun,” said lead designer Sebastien Grinke.
While sim games such as Forza Motorsports 3 are as much concerned with the accuracy of cars and tracks, an arcade game such as Nitro is about crashing around fast on a more simplified track.
“Obviously we’re taking big liberties with reality,” Grinke added.
In Nitro, your driver character starts out as a poor street racer in Rio, and as you win your way up the ladder, you eventually wind up driving a supercar in Dubai. Unless the cops get you.
Next was Need For Speed Shift, which is a higher-quality sim game also made by Electronic Arts. It’s the first time EA has offered a circuit race game with this level of fidelity and quality. When you crash into a wall, your vision gets blurry. If you smack the hood up into your field of vision, it stays there. When you accelerate, the view goes up, as if your head was being snapped back. Stuff like that. Shift comes out in September priced, like everything here, for about $60.
The most fun you might have in a video game could well come from a wild game called Split Second from Black Rock/Disney.
“We tried to recreate all the Hollywood summer blockbuster sequences,” said game director Nick Baynes.
We drove a generic race car through an airport, for instance, inside and outside the terminal, and had to dodge a crashing jumbo jet and a collapsing control tower. Fun. It’ll be out in early 2010.
A similarly fun arcade game from Bizarre Creations/Activision was called Blur, which focused on thrills over technically astute accuracy. It offers 14 “real world” locations from downtown Los Angeles to Brighton and plays on Xbox, PS3 and PC.
“It’s not about the perfect line through the corner, it’s about 20-car intense racing,” said lead track designer Charnjit Bansi.
Blur will come out this holiday season.
Gran Turismo 5? Still waiting (see sidebar).

But now we have to go home and make sure that the chainsaw still fires up, because we’re not entirely sure that cannibal zombies will not attack soon. To read more visit the AutoWeek Car news, road tests, photos and insight section.



This article was last updated on: 06/03/09, 11:10 et

 

 

i see you are having fun googleing everything under the sun on your new laptop, huh space

i like games, but i really cannot get into how much "stuff" everyone thinks they need to have to enjoy themselves. i have the monte, my old 'puter ( space, now that you updated, i might just have the oldest 'puter on MCF, lol) my ps2, my xbox 360, & my lil 13 inch tv, all of wich i bought with my own hard earned money, along with most of my games, and im content with that.
the kid who lives behind me has not been in the sun for so long i dont remember what he looks like, sometimes i talk to him, & all he does is brag about his xbox360 collection, giant tv, and how great he is on xbox live, & how his parents bought all of it. like its impressing me, lol.

a cool bit of info, though, sorry about the rant, lol.

 

They are finally starting to put some ***** back into E3 after neutering it a few years back.

It used to be about excessive spending and attractive females in skimpy outfits drawing attention to a game or product. then, it became all about business, and th expo shriveled.

Glad they are returning to their roots.

elaborating on Skylarks points, I am proud to have purchased all my toys myself. I work in It, so I try to stay up on my technology. but it is pathetic how people brag about the system they have, particularly if they live with their parents and had everything purchased for them.

Edit

and why is the barrel on the Sure shot rifle (looks like a shotgun to me) coming out of the magazine tube? Really, who designed that?

 

 

http://www.playstation3forums.com/

 

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Sweet, I have to watch it on G4 but I havent had time. Is olivia as hot as ever? haha