E3 Impressions: Sony
Sony should still have some surprises in tow, although one of them already leaked last week. There’s bound to be some news about the PSP Go, as well as exclusives such as the Uncharted sequel and God Of War 3 and services such as Playstation Home. The best thing about Sony in this situation is that according to sales numbers, they are in third place but that means they can definitely gain ground with some tight media integration and game selection.
- Jack Tretton, President of SCEA jumps on stage and does the introduction. “Something for every taste every budget every need” and starts to spout some numbers showing how much the brand grew in the past 12 months. He name checks MW2, FFXIII, Ratchet and Clank: Future, Heavy Rain, Rock Band: Beatles and Batman Arkham Asylum.
- Not a surprise, but the PS2 is first up. To me it’s amazing how the PS2 has bucked the standard gaming console cycle and is still selling at a good rate. There are no games shown for the system (of course) but he mentions it because, let’s face it, a lot of people are still looking for one and still buy games for it. Of course they would because backwards compatiblity is gone for the newer versions of the console. He mentions that the PS2 outsold current generation systems in April during it’s ninth year. OOOOOOH SNAP. Wait…that includes the Playstation 3 as well. Not sure if I woulda mentioned that, Jack. But whatever. Onto the games.
- He moves into Playstation 3 numbers, hitting 10 million install base. Also he mentions the expansion into South America.
- Playstation Network numbers are spouted out but he does a politician smooth segue into introducing Infamous, which released in May.
- Jack says theres 35 exclusives being released for the PS3 including Infamous and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which is about to be demoed.
- I’ve always been a fan of Uncharted so I’m very ready to watch this demo. Evan Wells, Naughty Dog Co-President takes the stage to mention the Uncharted Multiplayer Beta, which will go live at midnight, but he wants to show us the single player campaign. Nathan Drake looks very fluid in motion and almost moves like a rodent, how he jumps and climbs. He climbs a beam and a helicopter moves into view. Curse word. A gunfight with the helicopter along with some armed henchmen ensue. The first thing I notice is how Nathan reacts to things going on around him. He sways as the ledge he’s on breaks in half. He panics when he gets shot at. Another pretty cool move is the ability to lift himself over cover as he’s hanging off of a ledge to shoot. The gunplay is pretty standard fare but it still looks pretty fun. The building that he is fighting in begins to collapse on its side and furniture and books slide across the floor. Nathan loses his footing while debris and lose planks of wood splinter into smaller shards around him. Impressive particle effects abound. It’s a very impressive and pretty game and I can’t wait to play it.
- Mag is now next on deck a public unveiling of live gameplay. Mag is a 256 player online FPS which seems squad, army and battalion based. 256 players apprently are playing live online for this demo including people in Seattle and San Diego. Cross country attachments aren’t mentioned but I hope there’s some sort of netcode optimization for those who are too far away from some people. The game looks pretty standard. Not impressive as far as visuals, as there is a LOT of information on the screen at once. It almost reminds me of Quake Wars, another squad based console shooter. Mag is more objective based than how many points your team has. If you take over a missile battery, you have the ability to do missile strikes, if you take out an anti aircraft gun, you can parachute into certain areas. Very cool stuff. Even the spawning system is pretty good, as you have choppers, piloted by real players which fly in and drop you in. At the end, the commander calls a cluster bomb strike which opens up for the offense to move into the heart of the war zone. I’m impressed but I didn’t see much action from the person actually playing.
- Jack hits the stage and talks up the PSP3000, but that’s not as important as the lilac colored Hannah Montana PSP. Fuck. Yes. Jack introduces Kaz Hirai onstage to bring out the PSP Go. Totally saw this coming.
- Before he even brings out the PSP Go, I’m guessing to myself which pocket he has it in. I guess his right pocket. He goes for his left. Foiled again. It’s a little sexy piece of tech. It looks like a smaller PSP with a sliding screen which reveals the game pad. He makes a nice joke about it being nicknamed the “worst kept secret of E3”. He does make a point to mention that the PSP Go is NOT here to replace the original PSP. It still has the same size screen and takes M2 removable media but has 16 Gb of memory integrated. I groan when I hear M2. I can’t find that shit ANYWHERE. PSP Go will be 250 dollars US on Oct 1st.
- “Media Manager” is soon to be replaced by Media Go for easy transfer from your PC to your PSP. Sony has also taken the procedurally generated playlist thing and made “Sense Me” which makes your playlists depending on what mood or what kind of music you want to listen to, like Apple’s Genius.
- People who want to make games for the PSP also have a HUGE discount on dev tools. 80%. Pretty good.
- Kazunori Yamauichi comes on stage to taut his PSP version of one of my favorite racing franchises, Gran Turismo. It will run 60 frames per second and will be a full fledged title with 800 cars and over 30 tracks with different variations on each and will be a launch title for the PSP Go. I, for one, is pretty excited for it.
- Hideo Kojima, wearing the same shirt he wore at the Microsoft conference comes out to show us a new Metal Gear game, Metal Gear: Peace Walker. It’s a fully produced game by Kojima, so there will be long cutscenes, weird bosses and Japanese AV model posters. A trailer shows Snake walking and sneaking and running along a beach. As a matter of fact, I had this dream of Snake running alongside a beach….nevermind. And with that, there’s the PSP Go segment of hype.
- Jack comes back and mentions a Resident Evil game for PSP as well as SOCOM: Fire Team Bravo something, Little Big Planet and oh snap HANNAH MONTANNAAAAAH. There’s an audible applause from the audience. Now he discusses how awesome Playstation Network is. He announces almost 50 Playstation 1 games to the store with Final Fantasy VII being the first one available as of this announcement. Holy shit. I’m actually excited because I haven’t been able to play it on this non-backwards compatible PS3. I just realized what Sony is doing.
- Playstation Home (beta) is mentioned where he shows off some numbers and name checks a bunch of developer studios who will have Playstation Home spaces available in the future. Playstation Home hype video comes starring Chun Li? Jack Tretton’s Playstation Home id is: Mr. T. Now after this comes the real meat of the show, Playstation 3 games.
- I take a little issue of showing off a Rockstar produced game called Agent without having any screenshots or gameplay footage. My thing is, if there isn’t anything to show, don’t mention it. Same goes for you too Microsoft with your MGS spinoff game. At least Nintendo had a cool trailer for Metroid: Other M.
- Now comes a live demo of Assassins Creed II, set in Italy during the rennaisance period. The main character of AC2 this time will have famous friends by hobnobbing with Leonardo Di Vinci. He even becomes an accessory to murder by providing you with a flying machine to drop into a fortified location to kill a target. Big Ooh moment of the show: Dual blades going through the necks and into the brains of two guards at one time. Ezio moves through Italy similar to the first Assassins Creed. The animation is improved but so much but still looks pretty good. The jumping mechanic still isn’t as fluid as I’d like but it still looks pretty. The PSP version of Assassins Creed will work alongside the PS3 version, my guess is for unlockable weapons or missions. Pretty solid demo.
- Next up is Final Fantasy XIII. There’s a brand new english trailer…wait brand new English trailer? I thought they were going to work on the English version after the Japanese version dropped? Will all Final Fantasy XIII trailers, there’s not even a vague clue of what the story is about. Maybe some freedom fighters or some sort of resistance to a higher military power that harnesses the power of mechas or some sort of crystals. There’s some new fighting footage interspersed throughout and it looks pretty and colorful and the black guy seems to not curse every four words, Barrett.
- Wait. Final Fantasy XIV and it’s going to be an exclusive? How the hell? And it’s releasing the same year as XIII? What the hell? Oh wait. It’s a more traditional RPG fare: Swords and Chocobos and big armor with a long of string music. Jack mentions a “new online epic” so maybe it’s an MMORPG. Yeah, someone is going broke in 2010.
- Sony brings out their new motion controller but I can’t help but notice how nervous this guy is. It’s okay dude, you’re doing a great job. I’m proud of him. It’s still in prototype phase but he brings out what looks like a sextoy to demostrate what the motion controller, in conjunction with the Playstation Eyetoy, can do. Audible Oohs when they actually see a tennis racket in the Sony staffers hand as he laughs and utters “it’s still hard” while trying to hit a virtual tennis ball. Then they switch the tennis racket into a baseball bat and a fan and a watergun and into a sword.
- Another demo they show is how he can interact with different shapes and objects in a 3-d space. I’m imagining how fun it must be to play with this in Little Big Planet or a Sims game. They also show a nice writing demo and how accurate it can be. Spraypainting is cool because depending on how you angle your controller, it affects the thickness of your lines. Color me impressed (This is the same art pun that I made during the Microsoft conference, btw).
- In the back of my head, I’m just realizing that I haven’t seen God Of War III yet. What if Sony said screw it and showed us this motion controller tech demo stuff for the rest of the show? Riots ensue? Dogs and cats living together? Total Anarchy?
- Another battle scenario shows a bow and arrow demo against some slow prodding armored orcs. The accuracy looks pretty good and the demo guy got quite a few headshots in. There’s no announcements since, like Project Natal, it’s still in development.
- Modnation Racers is a fully customizable cart racing game for the PS3. It looks fun for the family and friends especially during parties (if you throw those type of parties, that is). The designs are cute and it’s fully user generated from the cars, the racers and even the tracks. One of the developers mention that they are harnessing all of the power of the PS3 with Modnation Racers. I chuckle at this comment but it looks pretty good, running at 60 fps from what I’m seeing here. You do get a feeling of speed and it looks like something I wouldn’t mind playing. You can do a LOT with the tracks, you can change surface altitude and backgrounds and well as upload it to let people play it online. Pretty solid presentation and the guy with the blue shirt (his name escapes me) should be hired to do more presentations.
- FUMITO UEDA. YES. (Jizz-In-My-Pants) Last Guardian trailer. I’m not typing anything about it because I’m too busy rewinding it but I’ll say this: It involves a little boy and a big animal and you know it’s going to make you cry.
- Without a huge introduction, a teaser for Gran Tursimo 5 runs, which includes WRX and NASCAR racing (!?). Wow.
- The next trailer HAS to be God of War III. As the demo starts, the first thing I notice is that Kratos hasn’t slacked off at the gym at ALL. The first skirmish is with a gaggle of charging skeleton warriors, who are quick to be dispatched by using one of them as a battering ram. There are some brutal moves in this game, as you may imagine and you witness the slaughter of a bunch of unarmed civilians as Kratos runs through the demo. He disposes of a Harpy by using it as a way to get across a long chasm then he slashes at it when he gets to the other side. Hilarious. They show a close up of one of the Harpies and I noticed that they have C cup breasts. Doubly hilarious. While he battles another group of skeleton warriors, a HUGE red behemoth lurks in the background. The scope is amazing as he’s about as large as Ares or the Colossus of Rhodes in the previous games. After he rips a skeleton in half (which strangely still had blood to spill) a Centaur emerges from a door on the other side, flanked by a few more of the skeleton warriors. The skeletons can bunch up on him and attempt to hold him down but Kratos, with a series of button presses, can burst from the dogpile, Matrix Reloaded style and continue decimating his opposition. Kratos equips his lion fisted boxing gloves to punch the living crap out of everything in his way. After he gets the prompts for the button presses, Kratos lays into the Centaur then DISEMBOWELS him. I’ve never had such a mark out moment in this E3 than this. Next might be even better as a Chimera attempts to gain an advantage by sneaking up behind Kratos. First he takes off his snake tail, then stabs him in the chest repeatedly then stabs him with his own horns. There’s an extra 20 minutes of demo gameplay on the show floor so everybody goes “AWWWW”. I’m truly impressed and I can’t freaking wait.
- Jack Tretton comes out and mentions that it’ll be available in 2010. Ha Ha. Jack says that Sony will never become complacent in their position. That was a good one for the critics.
My Thoughts
I’m throrougly impressed with Sony, although a majority of these games won’t be released well into 2010. I mentioned the fact that they announced a game they couldn’t even show a screenshot or even concept art for (Agent) and that sort of annoys me. But Sony has a strong first party lineup coming if you can wait until 2010. The PSP Go info was leaked before time so there were no pleasant surprises there but the restructuring of Sony’s digital service seems pretty good for owners of both portable platforms. I’m glad they spent little to no time mentioning Playstation Home, as it’s in perpetual beta until Ares knows when. The inclusion of the Playstation 1 games on PSN is a great mention for people who want to play some of the older games. The Uncharted 2 demo looked solid and I’m really excited for Last Guardian. I’d have to say, Sony did good. I came into this conference pretty pessimistic but I’m thoroughly impressed. If they can stay on schedule with the exclusives, 2010 will be a good year for Sony, although they’d have to fight for second place again Microsoft, who’s looking to strengthen their install base as well. Addition as of 5:16 CST: Where was the price discussion? Are there any price drops coming? They never once discussed the value of the product especially considering it’s price.
Also: My mancrush on Jack Tretton still remains.
renegade frenchfry. 
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