E3 is finally over � and thank fuck for that. We've had technical specs and hardware and sequels thrown at us like monkeys throw their manure, and it's only now that the verbal assault is finally over that we can clear away the horrible mess that hordes of PR men have chucked in our faces. Amid the usual mindless updates, recycled ideas, and interchangeable fascias (yes, I'm looking at you, GB Micro) we still have a thin ray of hope. Like the three wise men that came to bring Jesus gifts, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are bringing us the gift of brand new hardware. Perhaps comparing certain companies to wise men is not such a good idea ("Zen of gaming", anyone?), but the gifts they bear are far more interesting than frankincense or myrrh. Personally, it's Microsoft's vision for online gaming and the mysterious Revolution console that have caught my attention � but with the 360 showing few titles of interest and Nintendo showing no titles at all for their new machine, I can only pray that the future of videogames is in safe hands.

Not that I'm a religious man.

For me, an awful lot rests on this generation of consoles. The PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Revolution all seem to project different visions of the future. One of the three wants to keep gaming as it is � make everything bigger, faster, and more powerful. One aims to change the social aspect of play and develop a community around its machine and its games. The third wants to reinvent gaming altogether. But I don't care about that. All I care about right now is the actual videogames.

You see, it's all very well saying that you can change the face of gaming in the ways these companies are claiming. But every word means nothing without some decent games to back it up.

You know what really, really bothers me about the state of the industry today? We have just reached the end of the biggest, most important videogames event of the year, where all the new games and projects are unveiled before the world � and the only game I'm really looking forward to on home systems is based on an eighteen year old franchise about an elf with a green cap. Of course, that could all change in the coming months, but if all that the future can deliver is cheap sequels and rehashes lacking substance or imagination, there really isn't much hope for the industry.

When I was young and innocent, I owned a Super Nintendo and four or five games. With the exception of Super Mario Kart all of them were platformers, and yet I never felt a desire to own more games. The games I had were so entertaining, so interesting, and so much fun, that I never grew bored of playing them. I wasn't skilled enough to see the end of Super Mario World �� but that was alright, because I was perfectly happy to play the same levels over and over again. Some sections of Diddy Kong's Quest drove me insane � but somehow the game still managed to hold my interest. I reached a point in Plok where I could no longer progress � and yet I still look back on it fondly. Why don't any games have that kind of entertainment value anymore? Why do games have to deliver fast, fleeting rushes of enjoyment rather than the kind of multi-layered entertainment we felt back in the SNES era?

Maybe it's my fault. Perhaps the games developers are doing nothing wrong, and I'm just not playing the right games. But I'll tell you now, when an E3 comes and goes with very little to impress, I can't help but feel like things will only go downhill from here. When Sony unveil a wonderful piece of new hardware at last year's conference and seemingly disregard it the year after, I can't help but feel that videogames really have become all about 'the next big thing'. And when Microsoft start yammering on about the controller becoming an extension of your body, and how they will reach a billion consumers this generation, I can't help but feel that the videogames industry has lost its focus entirely, and the next generation of consoles will be a waste of time. This generation seriously needs to impress me if gaming is to remain one of my pastimes.

Still, here's to E3 2006, eh?

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