Post by DVM-501 on Jun 4, 2009 15:31:40 GMT -5
Alright, I did this last year and I really liked the response, so I've decided to do the same this year.
For those of you that missed Sony's conference or you just need a refresher to gather your thoughts you can view the full broadcasting here.
Opening:
This year Sony opened with new video. I must say, I liked the video. The imagery was sleek and imaginative and the song was upbeat yet not over powering. A very good start to the Sony press conference. However the real test has yet to come. Once Jack Trentton steps onto the stage the real conference begins.
So, Jack begins with a bit of a joke about the gaming industry's lack of ability to keep information a secret. I imagine that he's hinting at the PSP Go. This was a bit of a risky move, especially given the corniness of last year's attempt at an opening joke. However, this year I found some wit in his Joke and it gave me just enough of a chuckle that I didn't shake my head at it.
Skipping past Jack's comments about being nervous, we get to the first mention of the PS3 in which Jack sates that only the PS3 has the power to give an awesome resolution on a 40x80 foot screen. That's a pretty bold opening statement, though I believe that it was well placed. "Start bold, end bold" I always say. Continuing on Jack says that we'll se why 2009 will be Sony's best year ever. Alright, cool, now to wait and see if that's actually true. Last year they said that "2008 is the year of the PlayStation" and that didn't really turn out how much of the gaming community had hoped though it was better then previous years, so you'll have to forgive my skepticism of "the best year ever" statement.
"We provide a gaming experience second to none. Something for every taste, every need, every budget." Ok, now Jack's stating to loose my attention. I like Sony and all, but there's no way that they have something for "every taste and every budget", I can barley afford a single PS2 game, let alone a PS3. The PlayStation produces are excellent products, so I see no reason for the need to make statements that even none gamers know isn't true. His little statement almost over shadowed his follow up where he stated an awesome sales figure that Sony pulled more then 30% of total retail sales in 2008. That's a pretty awesome improvement over the last few years. Now if Sony can just keep the momentum going... Phh, who am I kidding. Of course they can. That's what Sony's known for, building up steam and then just plowing through everything.
"In 2009, if you want to have the ultimate gaming experience you need PlayStation." Wow, even bolder then the start of his opening. And with the list of games that he just rattled off (Modern Warfare 2, Final Fantasy 13, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Heavy Rain, and Rock Band Beatles) he very well may be right. We'll just have to wait and see.
PS2:
Oh dear. Here we go again. I know that Sony's still making sales and profit on the PS2 and PS2 games. But it's about time to let the PS2 phase out so that they can focus on building PS3 sales. The more time and energy that Sony has free to focus on the PS3 the better the PS3 will become and at this point I feel that the PS2 is just getting into he way of that. Personally I find it disappointing when Jack says that they don't plan on seeing an end to the PS2 after ten years. Sure it's great that Sony plans on producing what will sell, even if it's an older system. But like I said before, it's getting in the way of the PS3.
100 new titles to come this year. Yep, he wasn't kidding when he said that they don't plan on seeing an end to the PS2. 100 new PS2 title, 100 new things to take focus away from the PS3. As much as I love my PS2 and still enjoy playing games on it today I just don't see the need to build 100 new games for it. Maybe 30 or 40 as a final kick off for it's tenth year, but not a full 100.
Stats/Figures:
As much as I enjoyed the LittleBigPlanet form of the presentation last year, I must say that I'm glad that they didn't do that this year. They way that they did the presentation last year was a one shot deal and would have completely ruined the stats and figures portion of the conference. So, despite going back to the boring, old fashion, way of presenting the figures it was a wise choice on Sony's part.
22 Million PS3's sold and a growth of 40%? Now that is some awesome news. The more that Sony can build the PS3 and it's games the better the quality, quantity, and price of the PS3 and it's games. Which means good things for us as gamers. Total PSN account world wide has reached 24 million. Wow, I don't even want to imagine what that's look like if they were all on these forums, that's be nuts.
InFamous:
Awesome, yet not. InFamous seems to be an awesome game, and I'd love to get my hands on it some day. However, the game has already released, so why is it appearing at E3? Does it make Sony look good to talk about it because it's receiving such high rating? Probably, in fact I'd bet on it. But I'm a gamer and I've been watching InFamous for the last year so taking up time at E3 with it really doesn't do anything for me or anyone else who's been watching the status of the game. So for me, this was nothing more then time consuming.
Uncharted 2:
Now we're talking. Lets get Naught Dog in here to talk about a PS3 exclusive that I'd really like to see. So, Even Wells comes out and give a little bit of a talk on Uncharted 2 and then moves straight into gameplay. The first thing that I notice is the beautiful graphics. As usual Naughty Dog has come out with a visually stunning game. Though I was a little disappointed with the gameplay that Naughty Dog chose to display. It started off a little dull, then moved into a firefight with a helicopter and a bunch of men. Given that a huge part of Uncharted is the deep story I feel that ND would have been better off showing something that included a piece of the story. Shimmying across rooftops then randomly having a helicopter try to shoot you down isn't really a good display for a game that relies heavily on the story. In all it was pretty awesome, the gameplay looked fun and the graphics were beautiful, but it just didn't feel right having absolutely no part of the story shown.
MAG:
w00t! Bringing in MAG. And not just another trailer like last year, this time we get to see actually real time live gameplay. This is something that gamers have been craving for the last year, full gameplay footage. Ok, so the graphics aren't the best that we've seen on the PS3. But that hardly seems like that much of a sacrifice for the 256 player online gameplay. I like the way that they have it set up. Splitting all of the players into platoons who have their own objectives and spawn points and each have their own squad commander who is a real gamer. It really takes cooperative online gameplay to a whole new level.
PSP:
lol, Jack had a bit of a slip there. In listing hit games he referenced Crises Core and Final Fantasy 7 separately. But the only Final Fantasy 7 game that is currently on the PSP is Crises Core. Though I must say that he makes up for it with his follow up of Final Fantasy Dissidia and Assassins Creed: Bloodlines. I'm waiting for both.
"PSP for teen and tween girls." I can't say that I'm all that excited about this. Every game marketed specifically for this group involve ponies, shopping, dressup, singing, ect. None of which interest me in the least, and I even know some girls that are in that age group that wouldn't be interested either. I'm sure a few fathers are happy with this news, cause they now have an idea for a present for their daughters. But I can't imagine many people, other then that, watching E3 that really care. The vast majority of male and female gamers who watch E3 are the type of gamer to be interested in the other games; action, adventure, shooter, racing, rpg, etc. E3 just isn't the place to find tween girls interested in playing with virtual ponies. Heck I bet a few of them left to go get a better look at MAG.
Now, the lilac PSP I can see selling. I know several girls that would love to sit back and shoot zombies in the face with a pink PSP. And that's no joke.In comes Kaz Hirai to give us the first official announcement of the PSP Go. 50% smaller and 40% lighter then the PSP 1000. Now that's an amazing statistic, considering that the Go has 16 Gigs of internal memory, built in wi-fi, bluetooth, and a micro-media memory port, not to mention the hard drive.
Media Go, an updated program for easier media management from PlayStation Store downloads for the PSP. Ok, interesting. But is it compatible with Mac? I never even had the opportunity to experience the benefits and/or problems with the original program since they never made it compatible with Mac. For me this new program has to have Mac support or it's no better then the last version and will be absolutely useless to me since I no longer have a PC.
Sense me, an application for automatically generating playlists from your music depending on the mood that you select. Actually, I really rather like this. I like to listen to a lot of music and I like to listen to the vast majority of genres out there. So for me the music that I choose to listen to at the moment really depends on the mood that I'm in at the time. So to have my PSP generate playlists based completely on mood is an absolutely awesome feature.
80% price drop on PSP tool kits? That's some news that the PSP gamers can sink their teeth into. It really means nothing now, but for the future we'll be looking at more games and media at cheaper prices. What gamer doesn't like to hear that?
Hirai continues to say that from now on all PSP games will be made in both digital and UMD format. Good news for me. With the development of the PSP Go I was beginning to fear that eventually every PSP game would be made in digital format only. Personally I like to have a physical UMD for my games. Digital data is just too easy to loose, delete, and modify so I like to stick to the UMD for security reasons. With this announcement Hirai has just reassured me that the physical UMD disks that I like so much are here to stay, plus the availability of digital formats for those who prefer going all digital.
Here we finally see a release date and price for the Go. At $250 in the US this fall, the Go is a bit out of my price range, but then again I really don't have plans to buy one anyway. I'm content with my PSP 2000 and UMDs.
Skipping past the pricing and dates for the UK and JP, we get into video delivery service. Hirai announces that the video delivery service that so many PS3 owners have enjoyed is now coming to the PSP. Awesome news for PSP owners who don't have a PS3. We can now download movies and TV shows directly to our PSPs and watch them when ever and where ever we want. To make things even better Hiria announces that Sony has just signed partnerships with a host of companies to deliver a mass of new TV and movie content to the PlayStation Store. More content with easier accessibility, very good news.
Wait a sec, Kazunouri Yamauchi with Gran Turismo? On the PSP? Obviously I've been out of the Gran Turismo loop way too long, because this news came as a shock to me. Going back and looking through some threads in the Gran Turismo board I realize that the game has been known for quite some time, making me feel a little bad for not knowing about it until now. I do like the news. A full Gran Turismo game on the PSP with full track and car content, as well as four player Ad Hoc is a great idea and for me an awesome addition to the PSP games. However, I must say that I wasn't impressed by the video. The song choice I found to just be irritating and the video didn't display as much as I had expected, I would have liked to actually see a little gameplay in there.
"Quality from the Metal Gear Family." Wait, are we still on the PSP? Yes we are. Hideo Kojima joins the Sony press conference to announce the PSP Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Apparently I'm two days behind on the news because once again I didn't see this game coming, yet it's been known on the MGS series board two days. I'm kind of torn on this news. On one hand I'm thinking that they're milking the MGS series way too much and on the other I'm excited to see a handheld. Kojima goes on to announce that Peace Walker wont be a spin off, but in fact a true sequel to MGS4. Now that's pretty interesting news, and completely unexpected. So, Kojima introduces a trailer before leaving the stage, and as the trailer opens I'm left think "What is this?" It opens with real footage of real people with a voice over narration. However it does get better as it moves into CGI, showing Snake mostly running and sneaking like he always does. The graphics seem to be pretty good for the PSP, though they really can't compare to the graphics of MGS4 on the PS3, so for many it can be difficult to go back in graphics quality. Though I've got to say, the real hit was the end. I rolled when I saw Snake drop under a box, followed by a clone, then the guard's surprise as the box runs off.
Now, Jack comes back out. Quickly announcing Resident Evil, LittleBigPlanet, Soccom: Bravo Team 3, Monster Hunter: Freedom Unite, Motor Story: Arctic Edge, Hanna Montana, and Harry Potter. Then following up with a video featuring many different games, all coming to the PSP. There were a lot of major titles shown and listed, some of which I'm personally excited about. It really seems that the PSP will be huge this year. Though I do have to question whether or not Sony is spending too much time and energy on the PSP. After all the PS3 is supposed to be the mother ship of the PlayStation franchise right now, not the PSP. Think that Sony is actually hurting themselves a little bit here. It's like taking one step forward and two steps back.
PSN:
24 million registered users in 55 countries. Now that's a lot of potential friends, and between all of them over 475 million pieces of content was downloaded. I don't even want to try to calculate the number of Megabytes that adds up to. Jack informs us that there are over 200 games in the PlayStation Story with over 90 of them exclusives. That's pretty cool, not only do we have a large selection that's only getting bigger, but half of that selection is only available to the PlayStation. Jack seems to really be on a role here. Following up with talking about the built in wi-fi and free online gameplay with every PS3 and PSP. As well as the announcement of 50 PSX classics becoming available for download, starting with Final Fantasy 7 this very day. With all of this Jack is taking a very good shot at the other consoles, and personally I feel that it was a good move.
Home:
Really? Again? I'd rather go back to the PS2 discussion then bring Home back to take time from E3. Sure they actually have something to talk about this time since Home is actually available to the public now. But this game has shown up at E3 for the last few years and it's really getting old. It was old last year.
PS3:
FINALLY! 59 minuets into the conference and we're finally getting to see the PS3.
Alright, so we open the PS3 portion of the conference with a video. I was pretty impressed by the video, it was pretty good and the music was cool, showing off many different kinds of games coming to the PS3, some of which look pretty cool. Immediately following the video Jack talks about how great PS3 exclusives have sold and rated, which opens him to the announcement of a new PS3 exclusive, from the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, Agent. Ok, awesome, but where's the trailer? I like seeing new exclusives as the next PlayStation fan, but giving me nothing more then a name and a logo doesn't really tell me much about the game.
Oh, Assassin's Creed 2! Here comes another highly anticipated game. Alright, so Patrice Desilets and Sébastien Puel come out with a demo of the game. Right off the bat I see beautiful graphics with an awesome stealth assassination. As Patrice explains what's going on he provides the setting as the Italy Renaissance. That's pretty cool, skip to a new time frame and play as a new ancestor of the main character. I like it. As the demo continues we see the original AC style wall climbing and platforming followed immediately by another awesome assassination. Soon after Patrice reveals more interesting plot, saying that Leonardo Da Vinci will be a friend in the game and will develop technology for you to use. Ok so the artist and scientist in me just freaks here. I love the idea of Da Vinci being an ally in the game. We actually get a really good look at the physics in the game with one of Da Vinci's inventions, basically a glider. The use of gravity and rising heated air from bonfires to execrate and lift the glider is quite an impressive display of the realism of the physics in the game. Soon after the glider we get to see more of assassination techniques, a drop from behind and a double stab to the throat. The use of two hidden blades, as to only one in the first AC, makes assassination much more gruesome and efficient. Exactly what the gamers want.
Another good thing is the new AI system. As shown in the demo when jumping into a stack of hay an enemy is alerted to the noise and immediately walks to the hay and prepares to stab his spear into the hay to check for anyone hiding inside. This is great news for the gamers because it means that the AI is smarter, meaning more challenge and more realistic gameplay. Now in the following scene I did have a bit of a problem. Though the fight was cool and the disarming of enemies and using their weapons against them was awesome, I noticed a small glitch with the first enemy. As the enemy was stabbed the spear did not remain solid in the enemy, the spear moved freely in the enemies body as though there was nothing there. Chances are this will be fixed by the time of release, but it was a bit of an irritant for me in the demo. As the demo comes to a close I find that over all the game looks amazing, though Patrice was a bit monotone and boring to listen to.Alright, so now Jack comes back out announces a new trailer to Final Fantasy 13. Beautiful graphics, good hint into the story, good looking gameplay, Square's up to their usual work. Over all I'd have to say that this was the best FF13 trailer released yet. But do we really have to see FF13 again? I mean we all know that it's coming out, we've known for years. Not to mention that we've been looking at the game at other console conferences as well. As much as the Final Fantasy francise as been a major hit on all of the PlayStation consoles I really think that Sony would have been leaving FF13 out of this year's E3. It's being over hyped and over worked by Sony and it's not even an exclusive anymore. If it were an exclusive I could understand the extra effort and money to advertise the game, but not with it being multiplatfom.
However the following announcement of Final Fantasy 14 came to be a surprise to me, and to add to the shock was the announcement that it'll be an exclusive to the PS3. Awesome news for Sony and well placed. Perhaps having FF13 at E3 as an opening was a good thing. Maybe. I'm still considering at one. The trailer opens and yet another gorgeous display of graphics, a little bit on gameplay but not enough to really build any kind of opinion off of. It was a bit short, but you can't really expect too much length considering the Square has been busy with many other games, and I do mean many. Over all it wasn't massively jaw dropping, but it was shocking news that did play in the favor of Sony, so I've got to hand it to them on that one.
Motion control... Oh my, how do I begin... My first thought when Jack brought up motion control was "Oh dear Lord, what has Sony done this time? They just killed their own conference." After seeing the Natal system I was utterly shocked that Sony would being in a motion control system to E3. It was the very thing that I had been dreading since Monday morning, and here it was, right on my TV and Laptop (yes, I do run E3 live through both media). So, I turned up the volume, despite the expectation of having a mark on my face in the shape of my hand by the time they're done, and watch to see what they've come up with. Alright, so Richard Marks and Anthony Mikhailov, the creators of the this motion control system, come out onto the stage to display their system. Right off the bat I notice that Richard is extremely nervous, and rightfully so. He fumbles around a bit and fudges his words, all while moving around rather awkwardly. This isn't just nerves, the pore guy is petrified and noticeably so. This whole section would have been much better if Sony had someone else up on the stage to display the system, though I can't imagine them finding anyone to volunteer to go out in front of thousands of people to talk about a motion controller considering the circumstances. Now I was a little impressed that they chose to give a 100% live demonstration of the system. However it starts really rather lame. They move the controller around and overlay various objects, though they do make up for it a little bit by showing that the controller tracks in three dimensions at high sensitivity. Now, when they switch over to a first person view with a gun, things really started to pick up. The audience begins to get into it which helped to relieve a lot of Richard's nerves, which made his end of the presentation much better then it had started. A 3D motion controlled shooter. Now that's something that the gamers have been trying to get the developers to create for years. We kind of got it with one of the other system (I think you can figure out who), but it has yet to reach a level that gamers are really looking for. Surprisingly I'm actually starting to get a small glimmer of hope from this announcement of a motion controller. However, I'm still not convinced and I still see it as a major liability to Sony. So now we get into building and art. I was not impressed with the building in the very least. If I want to build something virtually I will pick up LittleBigPlanet, it has a much better system and more functionality then what was shown here. Though I was actually quite impressed with this art display. Anthony actually drew and wrote in the virtual world with the motion controller on a level that the Natal didn't even compare to. Then to add to it we get a real look at how sensitive the controller really is, and I was very impressed. The controller was not only sensitive, but it was far more sensitive then anything else out on the market to date. Soon following Anthony switches to a new setup where he displays character control, starting with a sword and shield. Again, shockingly awesome display. The sensitivity allowed Anthony to control the sword and shield movements in 3D real time with his own movements to change between blocking and striking when and where he wanted. Moving on to throwing shurikens, Anthony was able to simply point and throw like you would with a real shuriken. But the most impressive display for me was the archery. Anthony was able to move exactly as he would if he was using a real bow, even reaching back to grab a new arrow and pulling farther back for more power in his shot. This truly takes motion control to a who new level, and to have it scheduled to be released in Spring of 2010 is great news. Despite my fears and expectations the motion control system actually came out to be a very impressive system, and it's only in early development. It started as a complete disaster, got a little better in the middle, then came out in the end was awesome results. An extremely bold and risky move on the part of Sony, but I think they actually managed to pull it off, and I have to give props to Richard and Anthony for having the guts to come out on the sage to give the performance on the system.
LittleBigPlanet Comes back to the stage. Well sort off. Jack gives a little bit of information, but really uses the game to introduce the next Play/Creat/Share game, Mod Nation Racers. Actually, I'm happy that Sony chose to do that. We didn't need to see Sackboy make another major appearance at E3, it's be like several other things that I've complained about, just too much. But to use it as a springboard for a totally new game was a good move. For Mod Nation Racers, I really rather like it. It's basically a fully customizable Mario Cart on the PS3. You create your character, your car, and your tracks. Then you can share them, download them, and even rate them. This takes one of the major downfalls of racing games and throws it out the door. I'm talking about running out of tacks and cars. In every racing game you eventually play every track and use every car in the game, which means that eventually there will be nothing new for you to do in the game. But this game allows you to create your own tracks and use tracks created by others, meaning that there is no end to amount of tracks that are available in the game. The demo of track creation was equally impressive. The controls and abilities of what you can do with tracks is amazing, and even more amazing was the easiness of it all. The demo track was built, in full, and tested in only a few minuets.
Ico fans prepare to be amazed. The Last Guardian comes to the PS3 as the third and final game of the Ico trilogy. The trailer opens with stunning graphics. The CGI is cell shaded, so the graphics are more cartoony then realistic and it's a bit on the bright side. However, if you don't mind cell shading the trailer is just simply pretty. It is a little disappointing that we don't really get to see much in line of gameplay, just a few seconds of sneaking, throwing a barrel at a knight, and running. And the trailer was majority on the mellow side, completely opposite of the previous game Shadow of the Colossus a few years back. For me this announcement kind of came out neutral. It's awesome to see the last game and it's graphics are great, but I need more then that if I'm going to form an opinion on the game.
Ah, we finally get to see Gran Turismo 5, awesome. But wait, NASCAR? Now that's some news. I did not anticipate to see NASCAR in Gran Turismo 5. And there was actually some damage to a car. Gran Turismo finally has visible damage for crashes. Very, very good news. I have been waiting for visible damage since the start of the Gran Turismo series. It brings realism, and fun when you get board if you know what I mean.
But most of all realism. I've been looking forward to Gran Turismo 5, and now I'm looking forward to even more.Big Finish:
We finally come to the end of the conference and now we're expecting something huge. Sony comes in at the end of every conference with some smash hit closing announcement that blows everyone away. This year I was very disappointed. Sony comes in with a demo of God of War 3. Ok, huge highly anticipated exclusive title. But it's nothing new. GoW fans have been anticipating GoW3 since the end of the last game and Kratos made an appearance at last year's E3 press conference. A GoW3 demo does belong at this year's E3, and I would have been shocked if the game wasn't mentioned, but it didn't belong as the big finish. The big finish is meant for something ground brakingly huge that no one saw coming, everyone anticipated Kratos at E3. But ok, what's done is done, now on to the demo. Good opening by Stig Asmussen, his brief summery of GoW3 was very interesting and really drew my attention in. Now the gameplay begins and we see Kratos' usual brutal destruction of everything in his path, though the use of grabbing onto Harpies and killing them as they fly in order to help you travel across large gaps in the platform was really rather cool. But we don't really get into the combos until a few minuets into the game, and once again GoW delivers. The combos are beautifully swift, brutal, and gruesome; and I'd have to say that it's even more so then the previous games. Ironically I just happen to type the comments about the gruesomeness just as Kratos completely disembowels a Centaur (a little overly gory for my taste, but that's just me). Based off the demo I'd have to say that GoW3 will deliver everything that the gamers have expected, if not more. The game definitely belonged on the stage and I was glad to see some gameplay for the first time. I just didn't like the placement, and my disapproval of the placement grew exponentially when they were forced to cut the demo short because they ran out of time, you could even hear the crowd moan and complain when they cut it. Not so big of a big finish for me.
Over all:
Well, I'd have to say that I was a bit disappointed this year. I really thought that Sony was going to bring a better conference. Now don't get me wrong, Sony gave a good conference, and I liked a lot of what I saw. But I found far too many problems with this year's conference to really call it an "outstanding performance". In all, with their speeches, games mentioned, games shown, games played, hardware shown, new features, and over all use of effects and sound I'd have to give Sony between a B- and a B for this year's E3. The opening was strong, though the ending was so-so, and they wavered between awesome a meh through the middle. In the end a lot of what they brought to the show will most likely help to sell Sony products, but they did mention things from time to time that made gamers either get board and just simply turn away, so not nearly as strong of a performance as they could have given. Lets hope that Sony brings back the A game next year.
