Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I know this is coming a bit late, but I had a lot of things to get done, and sleep was one of them, because I had to drive back to California the next day. That being said, there was a lot more stuff that I missed the first day, that I figured should be reported. I also have a separate story coming this evening about my hands on time with Little Big Planet, for all you PS3 fans out there.

First off, I finally found the HD-DVD booth, but it was a rather somber group of people, because they looked out of their booth and straight into a beheamoth of a pirate ship that had been made for the Blu-Ray booth. Next to it was a Spider Man mockup and a Silver Surfer breaking out of one of the booth walls. Defintely not cool for the HD-DVD folks. That being said, I noticed something that I had never noticed up until this point. While I thought HD-DVD and Blu-Ray all looked good, it was interesting what looked better.

On the Blu-Ray side, I did not think that the live action movies outside of Pirates of the Carribean 3 looked all that good. They were a bit sharper, but nothing that would make me want to give up my DVD collection. Then The Simpsons Movie trailer came on the screen and I was blown away. Animated looked fantastic on Blu-Ray. They also had Cars on the demo loop and it too looked amazing, when I thought back to the regular DVD version. Funnier still was that I got the exact opposite experience from the HD-DVD camp. Live action seemed to pop off the screen more when dealing with HD-DVD, while animated movies looked a little darker and definitely not as vibrant. Just some observations.

I then got to see two of the stars of the show. One was the OLED TVs that Sony was showing off. With some no more than a half inch thick, while the smaller screens were as thin as a credit card, they posted amazing pictures with solid looking images. Not sure if this was a proof of concept, but if they get this to market first at a reasonable price, people better watch out. The other darling of the show was Panasonics massive 150″ Plasma screen TV. Huge does not begin to describe this monster. Just over 12 feet diagonally, the thing seemed to eat the entire wall that it was attached to. It was amazing to look at, and I could not even begin to imagine how good a game would look on that screen, but just thinking about how much room this thing would take is beyond rational thought. It is like a Jumbotron for the living room.

Toshiba continued to tout HD-DVD being the leader of “stand-alone” DVD players in the industry. Of course, this number takes on a whole new meaning, because it does not include PS3′s in the numbers, due to it not being a “stand-alone” player. Toshiba had a new TV it was announcing that would use the Cell processor to produce sharper pictures. Strange to see Toshiba be bedfellows and enemies at the same time.

Sony seemed to be taking a cue from Microsoft and did not really have anything at their booth in the way of PS3 games, beyond Little Big Planet. This was a strange departure from last year, as they had at least a dozen playable games at their booth. It was a little disappointing as I would have liked to have played through the latest build of Gran Turismo 5 or Devil May Cry 4. Any news about Home was greeted with a no comment.

Lastly, just to name drop, I want to say thanks to Tom from Microsoft for hooking me up with Limo rides. That made the trip so much more fun. Also, I got to meet up with the Frag Dolls and Fata1ity, while they whipped me in Rainbow Six Vegas and Quake 4. I also got to see a couple of has beens and one here and now in Sinbad, Shiela E and Jon Farvreu.

In parting, I already miss Las Vegas.