Games, games and more games

It’s the week of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, and for the video gaming world it means press conferences, reams of PR speak and announcements, announcements, announcements.

Over the years, the event has grown popular enough that most of the major press conferences are broadcast, both on television and over the Internet, to the general public. Luckily for those of you who don’t care to sit and be pitched to for two hours, I sat through them and can give you the highlights.

Microsoft opened the week by showing off some nice multiplatform and exclusive games — most notably “Halo 3: ODST” and “Metal Gear Solid Rising.” However, the highlight this year wasn’t a game but a new technology. Natal is a new motion sensing technology that utilizes a camera. The tech even impressed Steven Spielberg, who seemed excited to develop something utilizing it.

The next two conferences were by software publishers. Electronic Arts, or EA, didn’t really show anything too groundbreaking, but it was more than enough to whet people’s appetites. The less said about Ubisoft’s conference, the better.

Nintendo is the king of the video game world and its conference showed it’s not rocking the boat. They showed a lot of stuff that people have already seen, such as Motion Plus, a new add-on to the Wii Remote that will allow greater precision in movements.

They did have a few surprises for the audience, though, in “Super Mario Galaxy 2” and “Metroid: Other M,” a new game developed by Team Ninja, best known for their work on the Ninja Gaiden series.

The last to present was Sony, coming in with a marathon of a press conference. It was interesting watching them spin a year that, frankly, wasn’t that kind to their PlayStation family.

While they had some surprises, such as the announcement of an exclusive “Final Fantasy XIV” — which looks to be a massively multiplayer online RPG — there wasn’t really anything that could be considered game-changing. On the whole, they presented a fairly solid lineup. In particular, their preview of what is coming to the PlayStation Portable looked really cool and worth watching out for.

Overall, this year was kind of disappointing. Nothing really shocked the world in the way that the announcement that “Final Fantasy XIII” coming to the XBox 360 did last year. Still, there should be plenty of good stuff for those who just enjoy a few good games.