Digital Trends

New excitement, new sensations, a new generation… Officially, that was theme of this year's Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2006, held Friday, September 22 through Sunday, September 24 at the city's massive Makuhari Messe convention center.

Oddly enough though, general consensus at the event if you asked consumers was as follows. Despite the impending November 17th and 19th launches, respectively, of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, the time to toss your current console in favor of a mandatory system upgrade isn't necessarily at hand. Even if, of course, everyone does agree that some truly bad-ass titles are coming for all platforms, with a whopping 569-plus eye-opening digital diversions showcased at the event.

Still, although the convention drew a record attendance of 192, 411 enthusiasts and industry insiders eager to lay hands on the machines (May's Electronic Entertainment Expo hosted 60,000 by comparison), most were strangely nonplussed. Of over half a dozen individuals we personally polled, few showed much enthusiasm for the new systems, instead vowing to take a wait-and-see approach to the impending console wars. Only experts such as Yahoo! Video Games contributor Russ Fischer and IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon exhibited true enthusiasm for upcoming set-top debuts, and even then cautioned against rushing to make a purchase.

Not that we blame them. Any event (even the kind which played host to a veritable sweat-drenched sea of humanity) kicked off by a bizarre, meandering keynote such as the one offered by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan head Ken Kutaragi is bound to be something of a non-starter.

Among featured revelations: The $499 20GB PlayStation 3 model will now feature an HDMI port – previously exclusive to the 60GB edition – and retail for 49, 980 yen (around $426), a drastic drop from its previous 62,790 ($536 or so) price point. (Sorry – no cost savings announced for the North American market yet.) What's more, the machine's online networking capabilities offer the potential to support vast databases of externally-compiled digital content (e.g. satellite-mapped terrain data and 3D car models provided by other industries), thereby freeing game makers to focus on creative, not technical, aspects of product engineering and design.

Via the magic of shared computing, which lets users link their systems' CPUs during downtime to accomplish complex processing tasks, the company also hopes to do its part towards eradicating incurable disease. (See, Mom – we told you playing Resistance: Fall of Man could help stamp out cancer.)