E3 2006: The final word

Wednesday 17 May 2006
So, that was E3 2006. The most manic week of the gaming calendar has hurtled by once again in a tornado of news and a frenzy of game playing. Now, as relative calm returns and the chaos slowly seeps away, we look back on the big games, the big announcements, the highlights and the disappointments.

Much of the week's hottest news happened before the doors had opened on E3, with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all making some big announcements at their pre-show conferences.

Attendees at the Sony stage show were expecting the PlayStation giant to back up last year's big talk with some hard proof that PS3 would be the must-have next-gen console. But the event was something of a damp squib, despite the unveiling of PS3's motion sensing controller and the chance to play PS3 for the first time.

In stark contrast to Sony's snore-inducing performance, Nintendo jump started enthusiasm with a rousing show that gave the world its first look at a whole wash of Wii games, amongst them a new outing for Mario and a Wii-specific version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Microsoft used its pre-show gathering to make two huge announcements. The existence of Halo 3 was finally unveiled with a tantalising trailer, while the fourth instalment to the GTA series was also confirmed for Xbox 360.