Sony steals spotlight at Games Convention in Germany

Real news from the virtual world:

CONTINENTAL CONGRESS: The Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, is the biggest annual video-game event in Europe, and it keeps getting bigger. This year, more than 203,000 people (which includes normal civilians, not just gaming professionals) got a look at the latest offering from 547 exhibitors spread out over more than 1 million square feet. That's a lot to take in over the entire four-day show, which ended on Sunday.

Sony was the star, thanks to an assortment of hardware introductions. There's a new PlayStation 3 with a 160-gigabyte hard drive -- twice the storage of the current console -- that will sell for $500.

There's also a revamped PlayStation Portable, priced at $200, with a new LCD screen and a built-in microphone. And there's a cute new wireless keypad, which attaches to the PS3 controller and is meant to make it easier to chat with your friends in Sony's "Home" virtual world.

Perhaps the hottest gadget of the show, though, was Sony's PlayTV, which essentially turns the PS3 into a digital video recorder. It only works with Europe's digital terrestrial TV standard, though, and there hasn't even been a suggestion that Sony might bring a similar device to the United States.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY: There wasn't a whole lot of new software at Leipzig -- although, of course, it was the first time that most Europeans got a glimpse of the games we saw at E3 in July. But there were a few intriguing new titles that we'll probably see in the U.S. as well.

Sony led the way, again, with Heavy Rain, a moody PS3 thriller from Indigo Prophecy developer Quantic Dream. The company also scored with EyePet, a virtual critter that reacts to your movements through the PlayStation Eye camera attachment. One game, however, that's not likely to cross the Atlantic is SingStar: Queen -- as in the rock band Queen. The "SingStar" karaoke series has never quite caught on stateside, but who wouldn't want to sing like Freddie Mercury?

Konami offered an intriguing new action game, Lords of Shadow, which it described as "a dark fairy tale" and "an epic battle between good and evil" set in the Middle Ages. Sega has revamped its zombie-hunting franchise with House of the Dead Overkill, which has the flavor of a missing episode from the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino film Grindhouse. And Ubisoft has something for fans of Super Monkey Ball and Ape Escape: the virtual pet we've all been waiting for in Monkey Madness.

TOWER DEFENSE: All the fun stuff at Leipzig was overshadowed by a controversy over a piece of art that was on display at the show. As part of an exhibit celebrating the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders, the French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley created a version of the game in which you're trying to prevent the familiar aliens from destroying the World Trade Center.

"Like the original, this trial is ultimately unsuccessful, thus creating an articulated and critical commentary about the current war strategy," Stanley explained on his Web site. Naturally, some New Yorkers whose relatives died in the Sept. 11 attacks had a different interpretation, telling the New York Daily News they found the art "distasteful" and "disgusting."

Taito, which holds the Space Invaders copyright, put out a press release describing Stanley's use of the game as "wholly unauthorized" and said it was considering legal action against him. Finally, Stanley unplugged the installation, saying, "The American response to this work has been, frankly, immature, and lacking the sophistication and consideration that other parts of the world have so far shown the work."

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