It's not hard to forgive the hardware publishers for a little bit of hyperbole at E3, the annual trade show of the video game industry. It is, after all, their moment in the sun. But now that the crowds have gone home and the booth babes have changed back into street clothes, it's time to recognize that a fair number of the promises made last week will quietly fade away.
Need proof? Look no further than the introductory days of the PlayStation 2 or Xbox.
The Xbox was supposed to have resolution that went beyond HDTV and have a graphics chip three times beyond that of the PC. Ultimately, only a handful of games have offered 1080i resolution (the current standard for high-def). Most titles offering advanced graphics stick with 480p resolution, which is lower than high definition. And PCs had nVidia's (Research) GeForce 3 (which featured a graphics chip comparable to that found in the Xbox) months before the console launched.
Bill Gates, meanwhile, spoke of "incredible, persistent, online worlds" that would be created because of what the Xbox hard drive could do. Only one "True Fantasy Live Online" - was started, and it never materialized.
The PlayStation 2 was going to offer AOL Instant Messaging and have characters whose facial expressions were incredibly lifelike as they progressed through the game. AIM and PS2 were never again spoken in the same sentence and the lauded "emotion engine" didn't come close to living up to its promise.
Phil Harrison, an executive vice president at Sony, talked highly of software that would incorporate visual imaging, saying it would enable users to import photographs from a digital camera, then "animate these in 3D, add sounds, and email them to their family or friends, just like a greeting card."
Never happened.
