E3 News Round-Up

E3 2009

E3, last year not such a big event, has come back with tons of humongous announcements this year! Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all had their big conferences, and here are some highlights of the events:

What's New at Nintendo?

First off, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is coming in 2010. It's the first time that a Nintendo console has gotten two 3d Mario platformers, so this is pretty exciting. We can already confirm that Yoshi will play a large part in the sequel, giving a hand (and, er, tongue) to Mario. There is also a new Metroid game set for 2010. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is giving the Wii some 2d Mario platformer action, which you can see here. New Zelda and Pikmin titles are in the works, but may or may not make it out next year.

Soon to Come for Sony

Sony announced the PSP Go, a PSP that doesn't use the irritating UMD discs, but instead simply downloads games, movies, and whatever else onto its humongous 16GB of internal memory. It looks smaller and cooler, too. LittleBigPlanet and Gran Turismo were shown as coming to the new PSP Go. Gran Turismo 5 is also coming to the PS3 eventually, apparently this time with car damage (Yes!). They also announced a motion controller using a wand with the Playstation Eye, but unfortunately for them, it was kind of over-shadowed by a certain Xbox 360 announcement...

Extra Xbox

Microsoft announced several big-budget, M-rated, everyone-was-expecting-it kinds of games, including most notably Metal Gear Solid: Rising, an MGS game starring Raiden. But, nothing kids can really get into. However, their announcement of Project Natal shook some ground. Natal is a full-body motion controller where you don't even have to hold anything. I'm still getting my head wrapped around it, truthfully. There wasn't any price or release date or anything announced just yet, but this is some pretty stunning technology. I wouldn't expect to see it too soon, but it's coming.