I got back to Cape Cod from Atlanta on Sunday night, and now that I've had a day to recover, I figured I'd offer my thoughts on E3 '98 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo).

More than ever, E3 is becoming a bacchanalian orgy of marketing muscle: open bars, free goodies, shapely booth bunnies, loud noises, and spectacular booth sets. As Shakespeare put it in Macbeth, "...A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

We're talking about thirty-five football fields' worth of booth space and private suites (over 500,000 square feet!) packed with information and product from almost every serious computer game publisher on the planet. Held at the Georgia World Congress Center (adjacent to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta's downtown area, a stones' throw from the much-vaunted CNN Center), the expo held some of the most spectacular booths I'd ever seen at a trade show. Many of the major manufacturers (Nintendo, Sony, GT Interactive, Konami) had two-story booths on the show floor. Nintendo's had a working fountain with a giant Mario statue as the centerpiece and a cordoned-off by-invitation-only bar/lounge. The opulence was at once awe-inspiring and revolting.

The show itself was broken up into three parts: the West wing (where most of the "big players" were), the East wing (dubbed by one attendee "the nursery," where most of the young turks and minor players were), and a maze of private suites and offices off of the central show floors, where a variety of well-known publishers, manufacturers, distributors, and industry organizations parked themselves.

In addition to the incredible scale of the show itself, every night held some amazing party or gathering from the principal game publishers and hardware manufacturers in the market today. Bars, clubs, and restaurants around Atlanta were packed with people schmoozing and boozing--open bars were the norm.

I spoke with several developers shopping their products around without success. Unfortunately, the game market right now is about big money. Big money means big return on investment. Big ROI means that risk is bad, and innovation means risk. In other words, the folks with the best products at this year's show are going to have the toughest row to hoe in getting venture capital and marketing muscle to push their wares. Most of what was being shown was totally derivative of last year's titles: more Tomb Raider-style games, more racing games, more Quake-style games, except Bigger. Better. Faster. More. Rinse. Repeat.

Sega took the wraps off its new game system, the Dreamcast. After the Saturn debacle, the company is trying very carefully to make sure that developer support is wide open on this machine. To that end, Dreamcast will be based around Windows CE, assuring a cross-pollination of PC-to-console conversions. It also suggests that Sega's plans for the box go way beyond just console gaming; they've already dipped their toes in the frigid waters of so-called "convergence" tech, and my suspicion is that they're hedging their bets that home consumers will become increasingly interested in set-top technology for diverse usage: Internet, e-commerce, etc. as time goes on.

Sega indicates that the Dreamcast will be built around a Hitachi SH4 RISC chip retooled with a better FPU. NEC is providing the PowerVR for Dreamcast's 3D acceleration hardware, and Yamaha has built a 3D sound processor for the device as well. This, combined with what Sega reports to be the biggest marketing campaign for a video game console in history, suggests that they're down for the moment (with Saturn still around their neck like a boat anchor) but far from out, even if it'll take more than a year for Dreamcast to see retailers' shelves.

We're also on the cusp of seeing some great stuff happening with DVD. Red Orb is planning on releasing a DVD-ROM version of The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time, re-mastered with better video and digital sound. And believe it or not, Dragon's Lair--the perennial favorite videodisc game since I was a teen--is alive and well and waiting for DVD, again, with better sound and video than even the original (re-mastered using the original film and soundtracks). I had a chance to sit and talk with Rick Dyer (Dragon's Lair/Space Ace creator) about the new technology and he's quite enthusiastic about it. He's planning on re-releasing Shadoan (the epic game/story Dragon's Lair was inspired by) on DVD, re-mastered with better video and greatly enhanced audio. It's already made the rounds as a CD released by Interplay for the PC and TIG Publishing for the Mac.

On the hardware side, a number of manufacturers were showing off low-cost force feedback joysticks, game controllers, and steering wheels. I have a suspicion that this will be the year for these products, with many of them retailing for less than half of what they did a year ago.

One of the more innovative products I saw was there last year too: The Glove from Reality Quest. It's a Playstation-compatible game controller that straps to your forearm, putting trigger switches and control mechanisms underneath your fingers and wrist. Seems good for those of us with big hands or others who find tiny gamepads to be an repetitive stress nightmare.

I also got a chance to play Monster Truck Madness II in a Rock 'n' Ride Motion Simulator. These $499 chairs use pneumatic shocks to provide you with up to 55 degrees of motion. It interfaces to the serial port of a PC and they have support for other gaming platforms too (more info available from their website). The Rock 'n' Ride website shows gamers with 15" displays, but the units were demoed with big flatscreen LCD panels that were 19", I believe. Abso-friggin'-lutely fantastic (I was jonesing for three projection screens wrapped around my head, though). Most fun I had with my pants on at this year's show!

Other than that, the trend in gaming hardware is more than ever towards USB, which all the PC peripheral makers I spoke to are expecting to convert over to by the end of next year.

Speaking of trends, PC game developers whose products didn't rely on hardware accelerators were in the minority. If you haven't already saved your pennies for a faster motherboard with AGP, start saving: by this Christmas, you'll need it to take advantage of this year's crop of games. A lot of publishers are hedging their bets that everyone will have hardware-accelerated video by year's end.

It was quite an event, but as spectacular as it was, I'm sure next year's will put this one to shame: Next year, E3 returns to its roots by coming back to Los Angeles. I better book my hotel now...

Outside of that, I'd be happy to entertain any questions from anyone about the show...

For a full rundown of all the cool Mac stuff at the show, visit the Tikkabik/MGL E3 page for details).

- Peter Cohen [6/3/98]