Apparently, the Voodoo Music Experience festival was partially sponsored by Sony, who used the opportunity to pimp out the upcoming PlayStation 3. They had a truck which contained a bunch of PS3's, setup for play. After about a 10 minute wait in line, I got to spend about 5 - 10 minutes in there, messing around with some PS3's. I wasn't able to get Sara interested in playing, so she messed around with the camera. Here's a shot of me playing NBA Live '07:
NBA Live '07 certainly looked "next generation", in that the player models appeared to have a high polygon count. But I definitely noticed the "Uncanny Valley" problem. The faces on the NBA players in the game just looked disconcerting and strange. Aside from NBA Live '07, the other launch titles that they had on display included Madden '07, some sort of F1 racing game, a motocross game, and Resistence: Fall Of Man:
Of the games that I saw on display, that was pretty much the only one that I was interested in. The graphics sure did seem to be pretty good, but I can't exactly say that I was blown away. The control scheme was fairly standard for a console FPS - you used the left analog stick to move, and the right analog stick to aim. This is why I don't like FPS games on home consoles (with the exception of the Metroid Prime games, where the controls rock) - the controls just aren't as good as the keyboard/mouse combination on the PC.
So, at this point, the PS3 seems to be a little under-whelming. I'm sure that at some point, some sort of must-have game will materialize, which will make me lust after the PS3. But for now, the only thing that is even mildly intriguing about this console is the possibility of running Linux on it.
-Andy.