Game Sequels, Movie Tie-Ins Dominate E3

LOS ANGELES -- George Cano was a little disappointed. The 25-year-old video game fan flew from Alabama and shelled out $275 for a ticket to this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game industry's big, loud, annual shindig -- but he had not found any new games that particularly turned him on by Thursday afternoon.

"It's a little dull for me around here," he said, hitting the show floor in search of cool new games while a friend stood in a three-hour line to see a trailer for Nintendo's new Zelda game.

Cano came to the show with the hopes of checking out new game systems from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft -- but, to his dismay, most of the next-generation gear was being shown off only to those with connections or a lot of patience. He had seen the new Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 only on the screen of a computer, back in his hotel room.

If he had made his way to a demonstration of those two consoles or Nintendo's Revolution, he still would not have learned all that much. Sony and Microsoft showed off prototypes and long lists of tech specs, and Nintendo offered images of what it thinks its due-next-year Revolution will look like -- but none of these companies announced prices or release dates.

For some gamers still building their Xbox game library, Microsoft's announcement that the Xbox 360 will ship by the holiday season this year seems premature.

"It seems like they're rushing," said Redlands, Calif., game fan Arshad Jiffry as he played a new fighting game from Electronic Arts on the show floor.

The Nintendo question was another popular topic of debate: Next to Sony and Microsoft's broadband-connected, digital-media-enabled systems, can Nintendo's relatively simpler Revolution regain the ground the company has lost to the Xbox and PlayStation 2?

Nintendo's games, however, drew plenty of interest -- for instance, Nintendogs, a title for the Nintendo DS handheld that lets you take care of a virtual pooch. Take your digital pug on a walk in the game and the DS's wireless connection will allow you to meet up with other "nintendog" owners.

That level of creativity (or just strangeness) was hard to find in general in a show dominated by sequels and tie-in titles. Old game franchises are still going strong-- the floor featured demos of a new Tony Hawk game, the latest Quake sequel, four new Mario games and a new Civilization game on the way from local shop Firaxis.

Other new titles aim to cash in on popular offline trends -- for example, World Championship Poker 2, from Crave Entertainment. (Crave's other big title at the show was the Bible Game, which quizzes players on biblical trivia.)

More than one game publishing executive at the show said they were putting out fewer games. Philip W. O'Neil, chief operating officer of Vivendi Universal Games, said his company had half as many titles at the show as at last year's. "We're really pruning our portfolio," he said.

Vivendi Universal is betting heavily on a game starring rapper 50 Cent -- which the company aims to release at the same time as a 50 Cent movie and album.

Publishers also plan to have several movie-themed games land on store shelves as their companion flicks arrive in theaters. This year's batch includes games based on Peter Jackson's "King Kong," "Batman Begins" and "Fantastic Four."

But video game makers are digging deeper than ever into Hollywood's back catalogue for intellectual property to explore and exploit. This year '70s movies are particularly big, with "The Godfather," "Jaws," "Dirty Harry," "The Warriors" and even Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" getting the game treatment.

Richard Robledo, Taxi Driver's lead designer at Papaya Studio, explained his game as a colleague led alienated antihero Travis Bickle on a murderous rampage. The story line: It's two months after the events in the movie, and Bickle once again becomes obsessed with Betsy, the Cybill Shepherd character, when she gets kidnapped.

Robledo's team had been working on a game about a taxi driver when publisher Majesco Entertainment negotiated the rights to the film and had Robledo's team switch a few gears.

At this rate, a first-person shooter based on "Citizen Kane" may not be far off.