Microsoft and Nintendo Silence Sony

This year's E3 has been surprising and the main show hasn't even started yet. The big shock was how poor Sony's presentation was on Monday, hardly the wow factor that might have been expected given the excitement usually surrounding new Sony hardware.

At 499 and 599 Euros the PlayStation 3 is too expensive and the line-of games shown at the press conference was poor. A shoddy rush job of a Gran Turismo demo is not the way to court excitement from gamers.

I think most people agree to the two versions of Xbox 360 were a mistake at launch and I'm surprised Sony didn't learn from this mistake. Instead it is launching two different versions of the PlayStation 3, the cheapest of which lacks certain features such as HDMI and wifi which make it a very unattractive purchase as its unlikely these can be added later.

In contrast the Nintendo press conference was more shelf assured. The seeming panic and confusion from last year?s conference gave way to a more confident Nintendo. Yes Sony may have stolen the tilt controller concept, but Nintendo seems to have some idea what to do with the technology, unlike its rival. Nintendo has had a good year due to sales of the DS and is right to be confident about success for the Wii, despite the stupid name.

Today's press conference from Microsoft was equally confident. With its console selling well and a great roster of games scheduled for the year ahead, 2006 should be very good to Xbox 360. The announcement that Xbox 360 would receive GTA4 on day one, rather than wait until PlayStation owners had finished with it, was excellent news for Microsoft. The company showed off technology that allowed PC and Xbox 360 players to compete against each other in Shadowrun. There was the inevitable Halo 3 trailer, though it gave very little away at this stage.

So far it seems that both Nintendo and Microsoft have had a good E3, nothing too spectacular but no own goals, nothing to really get gamers angry or bemused. That's more than can be said for Sony, it seems like a company running out of ideas and unsure about the focus of its next console. PlayStation 3 will sell like hot cakes, that's clear, but the tide is turning against Sony. The company's arrogance has seen to that -