E3 2009: Sony Conference Impressions
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Sony was the last of the Big 3 companies to hold their press conference at E3 this year. What did they show, and how did they stack up to the other two? Read on for my impressions and video.
Microsoft’s briefing was full of glitz, glamour, and lots of games. Nintendo’s conference was full of boring lectures, sales data, a few good announcements, and possibly take-home tests. Sony was a bit of a combination of the two, falling a bit short of the quality of the Microsoft show, but they were far more successful than what Nintendo was able to put together. Sony didn’t cut out all the sales charts like Microsoft did, but they didn’t skimp on showing great looking games either.
Sony’s briefing began with a sense of humor about all the leaks they had beforehand, saying they want to be the industry leader even with news leaks. After a little bit of sales data, Naughty Dog came onstage to show off a demo of Uncharted 2: Drake’s Fortune. The game looks amazing, especially in the quality of character animation. After that, MAG (Massive Action Game) was demoed, showing gameplay for the first time. It looks somewhat impressive, but I’m still not convinced that it will be a compelling experience.
Next up was the official unveiling of the PSP Go. The design is quite a bit different than the current PSP-3000, and it will be co-existing with the current model rather than replacing it. The PSP Go will be in stores the beginning of October with a $249.99 price tag. Coming at the same time as the PSP Go will be a Gran Turismo game for the handheld system. Hideo Kojima decided to show up at Sony’s conference this year (after appearing at Microsoft’s yesterday). This time, he revealed a Metal Gear title for the PSP, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. The game appears to take place early on in the Metal Gear story, according to the insanely long trailer that had several different endings. Seriously, the thing just kept on going.
The next section of Sony’s show dragged on for a bit with a few montages and talk about Playstation Home. The crowd had a bit of fun with the presenters when they mockingly cheered for a Hannah Montana game. On the upside, there was a quick mention of a new Rockstar game exclusive to PS3 that is coming called Agent, but little detail was shared.
Luckily Sony got back on track with a live demo of Assassin’s Creed 2. The game looks more colorful than the original, probably due to the Italian setting during the Renaissance. The game’s new lead character, Ezio, is shown climbing buildings and leaping between rooftops much like in the first Assassin’s Creed. However there were several additions and twists to the formula that were shown as well, not the least of which is using Da Vinci’s flying machine to soar over the city. Ezio also has two different hidden blades, allowing him to covertly take out two guards at once, and he can also steal weapons from enemies as he fights them. The demo ended with Ezio leaping into the river to swim away, something that would have meant instant death in the first game. Assassin’s Creed 2 looks very good, and I can’t wait until it hits shelves this November.
Sony then showed off an English-language trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, followed by the surprise announcement of Final Fantasy XIV Online coming in 2010, exclusive to PS3. Everything seemed to be on track for Sony thus far, but then Sony revealed their take on a new motion controller, grinding the briefing to a halt.
The new controller featured was just a prototype, so the final look will most likely be quite a bit different than what was shown today. The new controller basically looks like a ping pong ball on the end of a wand. It works in conjunction with the EyeToy camera to detect position and rotation in 3D space. They showed off several simplistic tech demos of the thing, but it came off looking rather cheap and gimmicky, despite working fairly well. It is supposedly coming in the spring of 2010 despite appearing like it isn’t very far along. Compared to the technology behind Microsoft’s Project Natal camera, Sony’s motion controller doesn’t seem to be quite as innovative.
Luckily Sony had more games up their sleeve after the motion controller was revealed. Mod Nation Racers is another title in the vein of LittleBigPlanet. The game is a kart racer with tons of customization options. Particularly impressive was the demonstration of the simple to use, yet robust track editor included in the game. After that was a trailer for the new Team Ico game, The Last Guardian, looking a lot like Shadow of the Colossus in its art design. Next, Grand Turismo 5 showed up in trailer form, looking rather pretty, but very light on gameplay.
And Sony ended the show right there…….okay not really. They showed off a ton of gameplay from the first few minutes of God of War 3. The game looks to play a lot like the previous games in the series, except it is a lot prettier in the graphics department. The level of detail in the environments and character models was very impressive, and I’m sure it will sell a ton of copies when it releases in March 2010.
All in all, Sony had a really good show, despite the lackluster motion controller tech demos. They showed off a lot of games and an attractive new design for the PSP, certainly a lot more content than what Nintendo had.
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Would I be the only person here who would rather be at JavaOne?
I thought it was a well produced show, but the content wasn’t really as great as I would have liked. The Little Big Racer was the most exciting thing I saw. I liked the Go, but it’s too pricey right now.
Only started watching at the end of the PSPs mgs but i thought this conference was pretty good.
I loved the motion controls, maybe not loved, but thought it could be used in more real/normal games than microsofts natal could. GoW3 seemed ok but not fan of series.
FFXIV interested me for all of the trailer and thought i’d might buy a ps3 till they added the “online” bit a the end. Also its likely to be released on PC maybe 360 just because of the working they used. Seems to be a timed exclusive or at least the ps3 will be the only platform to play on release day.
That’s non-sense. Natal can do everything the Sony controller can do, because they both use a camera. There is nothing stopping Natal from working with accessories as well. The difference is that Natal is a lot more sophisticated than the Eyetoy. The Zcam that it’s based on is just crazy in what it can do.
I think the thing that put me off is saying that there is no controller but didnt realise that they could easily add something any peripheral they wanted. But who knows if thats going to happen or we are just going to get lots of eyetoy/mini type games first.
Natal is far more advanced and could do anything the other motion controllers can do if it works but didnt like the presentation of everyone just jumping/flailing around while sony’s one showed what types of things it could be used in a more normal game setting just made me prefer while watching. Tbh though im not a motion controller person so Natal just wins on the fact it could be used in many aplications outside gaming and the whole hand swipe thing reminded me of minority report.
Sony’s presentation was a welcome change of pace after sitting through Nintendo’s. While they have anything that made me reconsider going to get a PS3 what they had was good and presented well. The Go looked great and with it’s cartridge/disk-less design I could see it revolutionizing hand-held game distribution, if only it was a bit cheaper. All in all it kept me interested in Sony as a company and if we ever see a good price drop I’d be ready to go out and get a PS3 or Go.
Pffft. As little as I care about Final Fantasy XIV, since I’m not a big Final Fantasy MMO person, I still found this funny. Square had a press conference to refute Sony’s claims this morning:
“See, they’d like to clarify yesterday’s announcement that the game was “exclusive” to the PS3. It’s not. There’ll also be a PC version. Following that, however, a carefully-worded statement said “in terms of all other hardware, including Microsoft consoles, we are considering all other options at this time”.”
Seems to be some mixed messages there.
The wording sony used in the conference made it obvious it wasnt an exclusive. Mentioning that at launch it will be the only console FFXIV be availble on. PC/PS3 launch then i predict 360 3-6months later maybe. It would be something to see an online game that shared the same servers for all platforms. Phantasy star universe has PC/PS2 servers then 360 seperate.
I don’t think square needed to refute it since most company’s will do that and its always clear because the words stick out far to much. Like microsoft mentioning that the games after a certain point were exlusive and then BAM MG raiden comes on. However if it was exclusive you would bet they would mention the word “exclusive” at least 5 times during the showing of it to drill it into peoples minds.
One thing made me laugh was the sony’s karting game and the guy saying “it uses the full power of the ps3″. It was a low quality stream i saw but would be in serious doubt about the ps3 if that was said and shown at an earlier E3.
Square hasn’t said that it is exclusive one way or the other, including at launch. They haven’t said it’s not either, so it’s completely possible that it will be. But if someone is saying you’ve made up your mind one way or the other and you haven’t, then of course you will want to refute that.
Also, the 360 games that were exclusive were shown at a different time as Metal Gear. Yes, Metal Gear was shown after they said everything else would be exclusive. However, it was very obviously broken apart from the rest of the games. I never got the impression that they were implying it was exclusive. But maybe that’s just because I don’t care about the Metal Gear series enough to make an opinion one way or the other. But still, I never heard them say it was exclusive during the showing itself. The only time I heard the word Exclusive is when they were mentioning that the series had previously been exclusive to the Sony brand. Which isn’t exactly true, but I’m pretty sure later releases on other systems were beside the point.
Little Big Racer (Until they realize the error of their ways, and rename it…this is what I will call it) looked insanely awesome. Yeah, it’s just a kart racing game, so I doubt it will really be using the PS3’s entire power. But, I doubt they watered it down. I’m sure they are pushing as much into the game as they can. So I had no problem with that statement.
Considering that Final Fantasy XI is on the 360 I doubt Square would keep XIV exclusive to the PS3 for long if at all. Though in the short history of MMO’s there isn’t a good record of sequels transferring gracefully I don’t think they want to leave that section of the market alone, especially with other companies getting ready to enter into the console compatible MMO market. While it is debatable how successful Champions Online and other up and coming Console MMO’s will be, with more console MMO’s on the horizon Square’s default command of the genre is at stake and giving up the available consumer market of 360 users seems like faulty logic. Can’t day they wouldn’t do it though as I don’t really know what goes through there heads or what deals they might cut with Sony for even a launch period of PS3 exclusivity.