Around 70,000 people converged on the Los Angeles Convention Center to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this year. The convention didn't start off very well, when power went out to the media and administrative facilities - where we were supposed to pick up our press passes - and on one of the show floors. Members of the media had to wait in lines up to three and a half hours long to finally receive the much sought after media badge.

This year was an interesting one because Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were all on-hand to promote next-generation consoles that will surely have fans salivating. Microsoft plans to jump the gun and release the Xbox 360 first, hoping to pull PlayStation fans away from Sony.

At this year's E3, we stumbled upon a few interesting products that caught our attention: the Nintendo Game Boy Micro, the Gizmondo, and the LG SV360.

Nintendo Game Boy Micro

The Game Boy Micro is basically a Game Boy Advanced in a much more compact shell. Weighing in at 2.8 ounces and roughly the size of a closed clam-shell cell phone, the Micro has a twelve-hour rechargeable Li-Ion battery with a 2-inch TFT LCD. The main difference between the Micro and the Advanced is the higher resolution screen found in the Micro.

The Micro plays all of the Game Boy Advanced and Advanced SP games, but of course not the original Game Boy games. You also have many different face plates to choose from, including all sorts of different colors and patterns.

The Micro does not have an official release date, but sources said that consumers can expect it during the fourth quarter of this year. The suggested retail price is currently unknown.

Gizmondo Handheld Computer

Next up is the Gizmondo handheld device. This compact media center can play video games, take digital pictures, playback MP3 audio and movies encoded in the MPEG-4 format, send and receive MMS and SMS messages through GPRS, perform GPS tracking and mapping, and use Bluetooth wireless technology for multiplayer gaming.

The Gizmondo is one of the fastest handheld gaming devices out with a 400MHz ARM9 processor from Samsung and a 128-bit 3D graphics accelerator from nVidia - all running atop Microsoft Windows CE.

LG SV360 Smartphone

Lastly is the LG SV360 which is powered by ATI’s Imageon 2300 3D graphics chip. The Imageon 2300 graphics chip allows the phone to display one million polygons per second, which is roughly five times faster than any other mobile phone currently available. The SV360 is the first 3D-gaming phone that offers a console like gaming experience. Not only does it have a d-pad, but it also has a gyroscopic controller that is used by tilting the phone in the direction you wish to move.

Closed the SV360 appears to be a candy bar style phone, but it has a unique clamshell design which allows it to flip open from the side. It also includes a 1.3MP camera that will take still shots and video clips and stereo speakers on either end of the 320 x 240 pixel LCD display.

The SV360 is expected to ship sometime later this year.

Gaming Mouse Pads

We also stopped by Soft Trading's booth to speak with someone about the Steelpad and Icemat line of gaming products. The person we spoke with assured us that there is always something bigger and better being created, and gamers can be sure to continue to see good products from Steelpad and Icemat.

There are quite a few people that are still pessimistic about the idea of dropping money on a mouse pad. These products clearly aren't for people that play video games a couple of hours a week. Instead, they are for gaming enthusiasts that want to play as well as possible. Something that we failed to mention before is that the products these two companies release are actually used and critiqued by professional gamers.

For more information, go to the Steelpad and Icemat sites.

Final Thoughts

Something that attendees quickly noticed was Infinium Labs was nowhere to be found at E3 2005. It will be interesting to see what happens to the company once (if) it resurfaces. We have always been fairly skeptical about the Phantom, so we were not too surprised to notice that it was missing.

Today's roundup is the first of several articles that will be released about E3 2005. Future articles will include: game previews, game console previews, and even a couple of hardware previews. In the meantime, check out our official E3 gallery, complete with plenty of booth babe pics.