Nintendo, Microsoft stumble while Sony cruises

_UNCONVENTIONAL: If you attended the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, along with about 60,000 other people, you were probably blown away by the massive audiovisual bombast. If you returned for this year's E3 Media & Business Summit, which only 5,000 attended, you might think the entire video-game industry had collapsed.

The Entertainment Software Association's deliberate downsizing of E3 has gotten mixed results. On the one hand, it's a lot easier to get work done, since you don't have to fight through scrums of attendees gawking at scantily clad models that companies hired to demonstrate their wares. And you can buy a cup of coffee at the Los Angeles Convention Center food court without waiting in line for an hour.

On the other hand, some of those present this year missed the old spectacle.

"Now it's like a pipe-fitters' show in the basement," Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc told The San Francisco Chronicle. Also, many of the games expected for the holiday season were announced weeks ago, so E3 surprises were rare.

Of the three major console manufacturers, Microsoft probably gave its fans the most to look forward to. Sony was a close second, but Nintendo delivered a lackluster presentation that left a lot of observers scratching their heads.

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_ ANIMAL ATTRACTION: Nintendo's E3 press conference focused on three new Wii titles. One, "Animal Crossing: City Folk," was widely expected; it doesn't appear to break much new ground, but fans of the DS and GameCube versions should be happy. The second was "Wii Sports Resort," which will be packaged with the Wii MotionPlus, an accessory that boosts the accuracy of the console's controller.

The wild card was "Wii Music," the long-brewing project from Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto. In essence, it's an air-instrument game, in which you mime playing a guitar, a saxophone, drums or 60-some other instruments by waggling the Wii controllers. It's so simple that it's either brilliant or stupid. Asked if it isn't really a toy rather than a game, Miyamoto responded, "It's more interesting than a game."

None of these titles got the kind of response that greeted the announcement of Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" for the portable DS. And gamers can at least take heart in the knowledge that Nintendo's Mario and Zelda teams are developing new projects.