Dude I can vouch for the original posters comments and I have my own pictures to back it up. I don't know what regional manager you talked to but they lied big time. I am a manger that was also at the conference I wish that I had taken more than my 1.3 mega pixel cell phone to take pictures of the proceedings. Anyway to authenticate that there was both a blu-ray presence and that Gears of War was great (but no PS3 game) I came away with a little info that may be useful here.
1) The reason that the PS3 already looks as good if not better than the 360 ((according to Valve(Half-Life 2) and Vivendi(F.E.A.R.))) from the booths was that the Cell processor was orignally going to be a graphics processor as well for the PS3 (yes there were originally going to be two in the system) but the developers at the show stated that once NVIDIA joined the Sony ranks they backed off of that plan and decided to let NVIDIA build the RSX instead. Now this is where the rub is though (form the developer's mouths not mine) although the RSX (PS3 graphics card) and the XENOS (XBOX360 graphics card) are comparable the ability to use the Cell to share the rendering of textures and special effects gives the PS3 a decided advantage and that difference will only grow as time passes.
2) Microsoft did have a respectable presence at the show with HDVD. Peter Moore was there and they sponsored our dinner Friday night where they unveiled both the ZUNE (iPOD killer which will be on sale at Gamestop or EB near you just in time for the holidays) and the XBOX360 HDVD drive (which will retail for 199.99 and comes with a copy of King Kong on HDVD and will launch Nov 14). Sony countered this announcement with one of their own though that as of yet I have not seen leaked anywhere else and that is.......(as announced by the lady at the blu-ray booth during our show)....Talladega Nights on BLU-Ray will be included with every PS3 at launch. Also to note after the Microsoft dinner well all got to go hands on with HDVD, Zune, Gears of War (Mulitplayer), WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007, Splinter Cell D.A., Lost Planet, and some others that I didn't get to play. They were all good and seemed near final builds.
3) As far as PS3 presence goes Sony had the biggest display with Resistance, NBA 07 ( which later became Resistance after nobody wanted to play NBA), Genji, and Motorstorm. Sega had a booth to note which had Virtua Fighter 5 (in video form only) and more interestingly Sonic playable on both PS3 and XBOX360 side by side. One of the managers asked why the PS3 version looked better as far as lighting and contrast and accused Sega of connecting the 360 version up with composite cables and the PS3 with HDMI to make the difference hit home. At which point the rep showed us all that both units were connected with component cables and running on the same make and model television. The skeptics accused him of lying even after he turned the monitors to reveal both rear connections. He later stated that again the difference was the Cell and not the video card at the time.
