Well, my sister is putting me to shame with her regular updates and she is almost seven months pregnant and works full time, so I guess I don’t really have much excuse for not writing. I always seem to have plans for writing, but then can’t decide if I should even bother updating on events that have happened a while ago (eg. I still haven’t written about the trip to Mexico). Oh well. I’ll just start rambling and see where it goes.

Last week I was down in LA for E3, the big video game hoo-ha. It was a pretty good year for us (SEGA), though I have to say I think I’m pretty much over the whole show. It’s such an incredible sensory overload — your nerve endings get fried within a few hours on the first day. Then you realize you have two more days + six hours of it. And then you realize you have to meet with people to have *important* discussions about things, your brilliant schemes having to compete over the cacophony. And then you realize you have to do it the next day with a slight hangover. Well, that’s my experience, anyway, heh.

For most people in the industry, it’s a real clusterfuck of meetings, hob-nobbing and the just plain drudgery of working the booth floor. Fortunately, most of my hell was front-loaded in the form of  preps (website, setting up meetings) for the show. I didn’t have to work the floor and had just a few meetings a day. So that left me some time to check out some games and catch up with friends network.

If you read the gaming news, the new system from Nintendo (the unfortunately named “Wii,” pronounced “We”) stole the show. To me, this is merely because Nintendo has the hardest-core fans and Sony totally dropped the ball with their announcement of their new system costing slightly less than tuition to Harvard ($600 for the full system and $500 for a ghetto stripped-down system).

Don’t get me wrong–I love Nintendo. They are doing some really cool things by trying to reach beyond the normal gaming audience with their innovative controller, which will no doubt lead to some pretty cool new gameplay mechanics. But, so far, the only people that have really glommed onto it is the normal gaming audience. Will it catch on and go mass market? Hard to say. There were some interesting things on display in the  Nintendo booth. They had a neat tennis game (yes, you swing the controller like a racket) and the to-be-expected new versions of Mario and Zelda. We were also showing two games in the booth (Monkey Ball and Sonic). I think the funniest thing I saw though was a demo that had you conducting an orchestra that played in time with you waving the controller like a baton. It was kind of funny/cute to see the band frantically try to keep pace in a cartoon fashion.

The PS3’s price announcement was pretty annoying. Sony is trying pretty hard to lose its market share/stranglehold, that’s for sure. It will be a very interesting holiday season. PS3s will no doubt be uber-expensive and in short supply (as will quality launch titles, save for our most excellent Full Auto 2, natch), Wii will be $200 (or so it’s rumored) and Xbox360 will have some seriously nice games. For the price of one PS3, you could pick yourself up a nice wii600.

I think the best night I had was Wednesday–I just headed out to West LA to have dinner with Sirr, Vadan, Jay and David. We ate a pretty tasty dinner at the restaurant in a strip mall (gotta love LA). It was nice to get away from the schmoozefest and just chill with the peeps.

I did get my schmooze on the next night though, making the rounds with the notorious F.O.E. He dragged me to the Gametap Party which was on the 32nd floor of the SBC building. Would have been a nice view, if the weather hadn’t been so crap. Or maybe it’s typical LA sky/smog line. Anyway, had a few drinks and then was shepherded into a cab bound for the Escapist party on Sunset. The Escapist is a cool industry rag that manages to rise above the muck and do some solid thinking/reporting without the PR-stank that usually comes with gaming journalism. Had some interesting conversations before heading out to Dodger Tedium for the Sony Party (after scoring a last-minute ticket). The party itself was fairly meh, though I had fun hanging with some work peeps. We (thankfully) arrived just after the band played (Incubus), so you could actually do some socializing. Didn’t last long before packing it in and calling it a night.

Next day was a few meetings and then managed to get on an early flight home–score.

I did actually manage to get some work done–had some pretty interesting meetings with some peeps
I’ll probably do biz with. Can’t talk about it though. 😉

The weather was fantastic over the weekend, so I took advantage of on Saturday and and went hiking with some folks in Marin. It was actually more of a leisurely stroll from Pantoll down to Stimson Beach (including a nice bit of relaxation on the hot, yes hot!, beach. It was good to get out in teh nature after four days of asphalt and unwashed masses.

In the evening, took in dinner at Country Station Sushi (love that place) and a movie with the lady–Inside Man, the new Spike Lee joint. It was a pretty good movie, actually. A nice heist caper with a Lee twist. There were some annoying Lee moments (the obviously oppressed Arab and overzealous police), but there were also some funny things that gave an otherwise cliche plotline a nice splash a something different. Not to mention Clive Owen and Jodie Foster are badass.