Alternative title: "Blake gets really, really jaded with gaming"Looking at my E3 post from last year, I was wrong about a lot of things. Gears of War didn't launch with the 360, Call of Duty 2 sucked, and Nintendo hasn't completely lost the plot.Then again, I was right about a lot of things. 360 has been weak, Sony is a lying bunch of douchebags, and the PC really is in decline. Every couple of years there's an E3 where everyone says "PC gaming is back!" and this year wasn't one of them. Windows Vista stands to ruin computer gaming, hardware is about to hit a dead-end, and there's a serious lack of triple-A titles on the horizon, with the exception for spiritual successors for Diablo and System Shock. Here's my rundown for this year:Sony: Screw Sony. Seriously. Never before has a pre-show conference actually pissed people off, yet I find myself seething just thinking about the nonsense that was their conference. They showed ****no**** games of substance, every PS3 trailer was again composed of entirely CGI renders (except Eight Days, a possibly-good-looking game that mixed gameplay with CGI, maybe). And even with that, there were no promising titles there. PSP looks like it's going to continue its downhill trajectory. I love the system, I really do, but there's just not a huge wealth of games that do amazing things with the hardware, unless it's the only console you own. Oh, and pricing the PS3 at 500/600 and having Ken Kutaragi call that "too cheap?" A perfect example of how full of themselves Sony has become. At that price point, all the uneducated yokels who already have PS3s on preorder at Gamestop without having seen actual running games can't *afford* their systems. What's worse, Microsoft has already proven that a two-tier price structure is a bad, bad idea. Every system that retailed for 500 or even 400 in the 1990s (what's up, NeoGeo/Jaguar/3DO) bombed horribly and now Sony's going to bite the bullet unless Final Fantasy 7 gets remade.Sony might, *might* have one saving grace: Metal Gear Solid 4. The only trailer to show actual in-game graphics, and a game that promises to finish the MGS saga and do so with a game that won't be easy to swallow. After the 15-minute trailer, I'm convinced that Kojima might save the series and create the best game ever made in so doing. All I'm saying is the potential's there, because 2 and 3 sure as hell showed that Kojima can easily fall off his rocker.Microsoft: *cue sound of crickets chirping* Seriously, when you lead off your conference with Gears of War, a delayed game that's showing itself to be repetitive, it's all downhill from there. MS spent the show trumping the "Live Anywhere" program which will link together your Xbox gamer profile across your 360, your PC (if you're dumb enough to buy Vista) and your cell phone. WTF is this nonsense? I can see MS's vision for a unified gaming structure across all systems. And it's even a half-decent idea, lord knows I wish my cell phone interacted with one of my IM programs or email clients in a two-way fashion. But I have ZERO FUCKING INTEREST in letting all of my friends check my best Bejeweled score from the platform of their choice. Let me say this again: LIVE ANYWHERE WILL BE FUCKING USELESS AND SO WILL WINDOWS VISTA. There, that feels better.Nintendo: Nintendo, in Halo terms, killed everyone and brought back the flag. Holy hell. Nintendo hasn't had such a good showing since the Nintendo 64 premiere 10 years ago. The Wii and the DS are both positioned to make an absolute killing with their hardware, both have outstanding lineups for the winter and spring, and they're both half the price of their nearest competitors. Need I say more?OK, I guess so. Wii is showing itself to be living up to the hype. This funky new alternate controller thing opens up a lot of possibilities, but everyone's all psyched about SSB Brawl anyway. I'm personally psyched for the fact that at launch there will be a true new Zelda game, a true new Mario game, and a couple of decent games that demo what the controller can do (I don't care if Red Steel sucks, any game that lets me control guns and swords with the Wii controller has my money.) Oh, and if the tech demos for games like Tennis and orchestra conducting actually make release, they'll have a really curious mass-appeal game on their hands. Hell, my mom will play the orchestra game if it gets released. My *mom*. A 55-year-old executive. Between glasses of white wine and organic dinner, she will conduct the Wii Philharmonic. But amazingly, this toy which won E3 by itself had a follow-up that was worthy of any E3 winner: the DS. OK, so it's been out for 18 months, but the DS Lite version will finally have enough appeal for someone like me to buy it - not because of the iPod-ish looks but because of the smaller form factor, better ergonomics and much better screens. And when I do pick one up the day after launch, immediately after I finish the LSAT, there will be a huge bunch of innovative, fun games already available, from Kirby to New Super Mario Bros. to WarioWare. Thanks to Nintendo's E3 run this year, I feel almost as excited as I did 10 years ago when the N64 hype was at the point of meltdown and I made my silly little AOL screenname with exactly that hype in mind. Back then, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning in the middle of May. Now, I was saved from being a jaded, disenchanted soon-to-be former gamer. Well done, Nintendo.