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Microsoft's PAX booth tour
Yeah, we're kicking it here with our Joystiq pals in beautiful Redmond, Washington for a weekend of rubbing shoulders with the game-nerd elite. PAX's 17,000+ attendees this year are bursting the Meydenbauer Center at the seams, which means exhibitors like Microsoft can't quite have their usual sprawl of a booth. Luckily, they're moving the show -- which is now the biggest games show in North America thanks to the demise of E3 -- to downtown Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center next year, so hopefully the claustrophobic among us will be able to manage a step through a booth in '07. Keep reading for pics of the setup, and start saving your pennies for next year's extravaganza.
DualCor cPC in the wild
We're not nearly as into DualCor's cPC Windows convergence device now that we found out it doesn't come with any built-in wireless radios, but we've still been looking forward to catching it in the wild just the same, because any pocket-sized machine that sports both XP and WM5 is more than a little bit noteworthy in our book. And luckily for us, our partners-in-crime over at Engadget Chinese have just captured some nice photos of this two-processor machine as part of their extensive Computex 2006 coverage, although our contribution of copying and pasting the pics for you to peep should not be overlooked. More cPC snaps are available after the break, and more VIA-powered products from the CPU manufacturer's booth tour can be found by following the Read link...
Engadget Chinese still doing Computex (part II)
Yep, they're still over there kicking it Taiwan style at Computex, one of the largest computer and component trade shows around. Peep their Origami coverage, ATI tour, and Smartphone booth tour below. Don't forget, even if you don't speak traditional or simplified Chinese, there's plenty to enjoy over at the other Engadgets.Read - OrigamiRead - Microsoft SmartphonesRead - ATIRead - Crazy 47-inch touchscreen TV
Microsoft's E3 booth tour
It only seemed appropriate to finish off our booth tours with (one of) the biggest at E3 -- Microsoft's. We heard from a little birdie the figure on this thing was well into seven digits, and it's really no wonder. Similar to last year's, the giant two story building they installed on their huge spread of land in the south hall was nothing less than enormous, and that's to say nothing of the mammoth area they had for demo pods, their trailer theater, and the mini-booth dedicated to their newly rebranded Games for Windows initiative. Make no mistake about it, Microsoft showed at E3 and they weren't kidding around.
Ubisoft booth tour
Ubisoft has a pretty significant presence in the South Hall, showcasing upcoming titles like Assassin's Creed, Red Steel, Rayman 4, and Rainbow Six: Vegas. Of course, as one of the largest publishers in the world, we wouldn't expect any less. Sprinkled in with the French accents that always manage to sound so elegant, were hard pitches from actors pushing Ubisoft's flagship franchises. Continue for more photos.
LAPD at the PS3 booth
We were puzzled to see a heavy Los Angeles Police Department presence at the Sony booth. It's hard to be sure, but there appeared to be at least four officers present. Joystiq: So what's with the heavy police presence at this booth? None of the other exhibitors have a police presence. LAPD: "Well, [pause] there's a lot of valuable equipment here on the floor," he says, never taking his eyes off the the show floor as he answers the question.
Sony's E3 booth tour
Sony's "booth" was quite unlike Nintendo's carefully planned Wii area, and more like an expo unto itself. With PSP, PS2 and of course PS3 displays all competing for the square miles of floor space, the place was a zoo, but also held an impressive managerie of kiosks harboring playable titles. The PS3 games themselves were powered by late-release dev kits that were clearly displayed behind glass, and the titles sure looked pretty at those high resolutions, even if they were a bit PS2-ish in their controls and gameplay. Warhawk was of course the exception, and there were plenty of people waiting to get a shot at the action. We captured most of the chaos to share with you, so click on for the shots.
Nintendo's E3 booth tour
After swearing to the Nintendo booth staff that yes we bow at the feet of Miyamoto, no we've never touched a Sony device before in our lives, and yes we'd like to skip the mile long line to see the Wii, we managed to find ourselves in Nintendo's special little (or not so little) Wii paradise. There were playables galore, though that "27 playable titles" they mentioned at the keynote was a bit misleading. Sure, you could grab a Wiimote and start making a fool of yourself in any one of 27 different ways, but most of the playable stuff was actually just a tech demo or a mini game. Luckily, the big names like Zelda, Mario and Red Steel were there in force, and the good times were aplenty even with the tech demos. We'll have our impressions of the Wiimote pretty soon, but for now we've got a whole slew of pics from the booth, so take a look.
Live from CTIA: World's best Samsung booth
It's quite refreshing to see so many "World's ____s" at Samsung's booth. This time we've got the World's First 10 Megapixel Cameraphone, the World's Best HSDPA Handset, and the World's First Mobile WiMAX rig. We got hands ons with their new T509 slimphone, B600 10 megapixel cameraphone, their 8GB i310, S4300 musicphone, Z540 Vodafone phone (which happens to remind one a little much of the V3x), the Z510, D520 slim slider, Cingular's forthcoming D407, and, of course, some Samsung execs shooting the breeze about their devices.
Live from CTIA: Moto goes modern
Motorola usually has a pretty nice booth, but this CTIA they've injected a couple extra ounces of fancy, being they didn't have a whole lot of new gear to show off this time around. The PEBL amongst pebbles gag got a little old, but they needed to (and did) step up their booth's aesthetic. And you know when we start going on and on about booth aesthetics, we're pretty tapped for some news, so check out the CTIA eye candy after the break.
GDC: The PlayStation booth tour
In clearing out the remainder of my GDC photographs, I've assembled this tour of Sony's relatively massive PlayStation booth. Compared to many of the other booths in the San Jose Convention Center, Sony's white PlayStation station was impressive; owing more to style than outright scale (which wasn't much larger than Nintendo's). While impressive, the booths at GDC are lilliputian compared to the marketing monsters at E3. Read on for the shots ...
