The Tokyo Game Show is one of the highlights of the year for the video game industry, which spreads its major announcements between this event, the Leipzig Game Convention and a diminished E3 show in Los Angeles in the summer, and the Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco in the spring.
Tokyo is more about games and gamers, with nearly 900 games on display and up to 180,000 people expected to attend over the next four days, rather than the limited industry professional events of E3 and GDC.
The console makers are therefore emphasising new titles, with Microsoft announcing a new version of Halo – Halo 3: Recon, to debut in a year’s time.
It also gave a launch date of November 19 for the “New Xbox Experience” – an update to its interface that allows the creation of animated avatars and new community features.
The “Experience” is designed to compete with Sony’s Home, a much delayed virtual-world interface for the PlayStation 3.
While Sony has yet to set a date for its official release, Jack Tretton, its US president, confirmed it would debut in November, in a recent interview at Sony’s US headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Extracts from that interview after the jump: Read more
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