The marketing drone was demonstrating a new extreme-sports game based on roller skating, calling attention to the way the game's physics model allowed the skater's extremely short skirt to move with lifelike precision. "We've also revolutionized the boob technology," he cheerfully reported as the skater jiggled her way through another death-defying jump.

And there you have the essence of what makes the Electronic Entertainment Expo special, at least for someone who spends a lot of his time covering the video game industry as a big, lucrative and growing business. E3, the industry's main trade show, confirms that gaming is all that. But it also reminds you that this is a $6 billion business designed for, and largely by, 18- to 34-year-old males. The result, at least on the show floor, is a bevy of anatomically gifted, spandex-busting booth babes showing off games that seem to have come off an assembly line with about five components. You can shoot people or you can hit people. You can spin around on a skateboard or a motorcycle. You can enjoy a soundtrack that consists of rap-metal or metal-rap.