Published: May 15, 2006 11:38 pm      

Beyond PS3 and 360

Like those annoying political prognosticators who turned to the 2008 presidential race before the 2004 one was even done, we begin asap’s coverage of the E3 video game conference with an eye on the future.

But before we reach for the crystal ball, the big surprise Monday from Sony was a motion-sensing controller for the Playstation 3 that should take some of the wind out of the Nintendo Wii’s controller-centric sails. It appears similar to the PS2 controller but detects six degrees of movement.

At a lengthy press conference on the Sony Pictures lot, Sony announced the PS3 will go on sale in the U.S. Nov. 18 for $499 for the basic version sporting a 20 gigabyte hard drive, and $599 for one with a 60GB drive. Nintendo plans to debut Wii on Tuesday morning at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

SONY PLAYSTATION 4

Chris Slate, editor-in-chief of “PSM: Independent Playstation Magazine,” since its launch in 1997:

“By the time we get to Playstation 4, we’ll have this mass penetration with how many gamers are going online. When that happens you really are going to see more of a dramatic shift to things like digital distribution of full games. They’re dipping their toe in the water with that now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time of Playstation 4 there’s a heavy focus on episodic content: Break a game into chapters and sell it that way.

MICROSOFT XBOX 720 (or whatever it may be called)

Dean Takahashi, author of “The Xbox 360 Uncloaked: The Real Story Behind Microsoft’s Next-Generation Video Game Console,” which went on sale Monday:

“As far as where they’re going to take graphics, I think people foresee that there’s still an endless technological road they could pursue, until they get to something close to the Star Trek Holodeck. That’s the ultimate goal of everybody.”

“One of the goals is to create online invisibility, and by that they mean you can go online with the games of the future and not be able to tell who you’re playing against — whether they’re a real person or an artificial intelligence opponent, a computer controlled player. That’s a matter of how good can you make the artificial intelligence.”

“One of the other frontiers right now that they’re really just getting started on is physics, and the idea that everything inside a virtual world has its own physical laws. Right now, if you shoot at a bunch of things, you might see the impact on the actual target, but the physics, if you imbue it into the entire world, you’ll see how it comes into the game a lot more.

“I would expect them to make use of force feedback technology more. You’ll probably also see them trying to chase Sony on things like the EyeToy, using cameras as input devices. ...

“I don’t know if the next consoles are really going to be the equivalent of movies. Right now I think they fall just short of it in terms of graphics quality. You can still tell the difference between movies and something that’s artificial. The difference between game play and cinematic cut-scenes — that line starts dissolving with the Playstation 3.”