Because of our unfortunate schedule, we had only one day to see E3 Expo. Almost the whole show was dedicated to showing video games (for PC and consoles), with very little else to see (most of the rest are video game press and products for the retail industry, such as CD repair machines). We did manage to find an Israeli company that streams regular Windows software over the Internet (mostly for game subscription services), a Swedish developer of high-end mobile games (for handheld consoles, palmtops, and powerful mobile phones), another Swedish companies with Java-based mobile phone and web games, and a Taiwanese MMORPG producer we are already in business with.

As for the video games, I have to admit I have completely lost touch with the recent developments. I am sure there were many exciting new titles being showcased, but it did not really capture my attention. All I noticed was that most games these days are either first-person-shooters or multi-player online fantasy games, and that the quality of the graphics is really impressive nowadays, which makes the level of violence in some (most?) of the games even more troublesome.

Probably the two biggest E3 news were the presentation of Sony's handheld PSP system (able to play PS2 games and movies, although probably not directly from the regular disks, since those are too big) and Nintendo's next generation, double-screen GameBoy (also backwards compatible). Both looked very interesting, will be released later this year (at least in Japan) and I would have loved to take a closer look, but there were seriously long lines in front of their booths.

One thing I was counting on that did not materialise were dozens of give-away T-shirts. As it is, I only got one from a video game TV show, who would give a free iPod Mini to a lucky handful they spotted wearing their shirt later. We met one such winner on the Metro platform on the way back to the hotel (which reminded me that we forgot to visit Apple's booth). All I could salvage was a couple of demo CDs and a Magic starter deck.