Games

Sony Shows Off, Weirds Out at E3 2009 Media Briefing

By Eli Green
June 4, 2009 - 15:30

It began with the current Playstation platforms rising out of a landscape of Xs, Os, triangles and squares, then moves to a montage of games currently available and those coming soon (at least the ones we already knew about). Then Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) came out to the stage and said “Thank god you guys showed up.” He was talking about how leaks to the press leave little to talk about by the time E3 or any other major conference rolls around. Had he not said so though, I would have assumed he meant that Sony still didn't have many games to show for its still fledging high definition console and the PSP. That's where my non-Playstation fan mind would have gone. I was soon to find out that I might have to re-think that philosophy.

After his odd initial introduction, Tretton gave a short speech about the business side of things for Playstation, the 10 year life span of PS2, the company's three platforms, 22 million PS3s sold last year, etc. Most important though, it was quick and to the point. He even made it flow straight into the theme for the Briefing by introducing the first of a few Playstation 3 exclusives they would be showing off, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

The live demonstration of Uncharted 2 which followed was, to say the least, stunning. The game looks great and has huge vista views. The gameplay appears solid. It was nothing particularly new, but it certainly looked like a great adventure game. I'll make sure to point this out again. I'm not a fan of the Playstation platforms overall, but I was quite impressed, especially by the scale of things in the game (well, that and the voice of Nathan Drake is played by Nolan North). If I owned a Playstation 3, this would on my must get list for the holiday season.

Tretton then came back on stage and officially introduced the Briefing's theme, that the Playstation exclusives are not just meant to be available only on Playstation, but “only possible on Playstation”. Now whether I believe that or not, the theme was well presented and they made sure it recurred in an impressive way during various points of the Briefing. He then introduced Andy Bodwin of Zipper Interactive to the stage to give a live introduction of MAG, a new first person shooter war game for up to 256 players simultaneously. Not content to give a basic overview of the game with a small demo, Bodwin introduced a few more players to the stage, as well as putting every other player (they actually had a full 256 player game set up over a network) up on the screen behind them. They then proceeded to have the 256 player battle played on the screens and, yes, I was impressed yet again. Graphically speaking, the game left a bit to be desired, but as far as the gameplay went, it looked great. You can plan attacks with your squads, move in on targets, call in air strikes (if you gain access to higher ground), and if players get killed, they can be re-spawned via cavalry helicopters, which bring them back into the game (you also need to be holding the higher ground to do that as well, from what I understood). MAG will be releasing this fall.

Tretton returned to the stage again to talk about the PSP. He noted that the Rock Band Unplugged Entertainment Pack will be releasing next week and noted that Sony wants to get more kids and young teen/pre-teens, as well as girls, into gaming on the PSP as well. So it is planning to release a Hannah Montana branded, lilac coloured PSP Entertainment Pack (did you just smack yourself upside the head too?). For some reason, there were actually people cheering in the crowd for that announcement. I can only hope it was sarcastic cheering.

Thankfully, soon after, Kaz Hirai was introduced to the stage. He then proceeded to unveil the PSP Go, the worst kept secret of E3 apparently. It's a pretty neat looking little (compared to the other models of the PSP) device. It's got a slide out control system, 16 GB internal flash memory and a completely new media manager called Media Go. Oh, and it will work with a new, smaller Memory Stick format (why do you have to keep doing this to your users Sony?). Hirai also introduced a new music application for the PSP platform called SenseMe, which will release this fall. It will be able to analyze your music and make you a playlist to suit your tastes. As far as the release date for PSP Go goes, it will, astonishingly, be available in North America and Europe first. October 1^st to be specific, for $249.99 USD or €249.99. It will be available in Japan on November 1^st. He then went on to talk about the new updates for their content providing system, including movies and TV shows, and how much easier navigating the store will be.

Hirai then introduced Kazunouri Yamauchi to talk about Gran Turismo PSP. Through a translator, Yamauchi gave a long winded explanation of what I can only assume were all the features of the game. He then showed a trailer for the PSP Go and Gran Turismo PSP, then handed the floor back to Hirai, who gave a brief history of the Gran Turismo franchise before announcing that the game will release in conjunction with the PSP Go. See, that's flow people! It was a little bit slower than earlier in the Briefing, but still far less boring than Nintendo's. Aside from Yamauchi's “speech”, the whole Briefing flowed smoothly.

Hirai then brought Hideo Kojima (who had already been at the Xbox 360 Briefing the day before) out to introduce Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker for PSP. It is set 10 years after Metal Gear Solid 3, in the1970s. He then showed a trailer for Peace Walker. It's set to release some time in 2010.

Hirai then returned to the stage once more, to reiterate all the PSP stuff in short, and then handed it back over to Tretton, who then mentioned some other upcoming PSP titles, including Resident Evil, LittleBigPlanet, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Hannah Montana (seriously, are little girls really going to want this system just for the lilac PSP and that game?) and Harry Potter. After a video showing different PSP titles, Tretton went on to talk about the Playstation Network and Home and showed a trailer for Home.

He finally brought things back to Playstation 3, announcing Agent, a new Playstation 3 exclusive franchise from Rockstar. He also made sure to note that the Grand Theft Auto franchise really helped the Playstation platforms. He then introduced a two members from Ubisoft's development team to demo Assassin's Creed 2. This was, yet another impressive demonstration. While the game may not be coming out exclusively for Playstation 3, it will have special content available to unlock if you connect it with the PSP version, Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines. One of the more intriguing aspects of Assassin's Creed 2 mentioned during the demo was the fact that Leonardo Da Vinci will act as the hero's own personal weapon inventor, which means that you'll get to use crazy gadgets and weapons, including Da Vinci's flying machine.

After the demo, Tretton talked about Square Enix and how the Final Fantasy franchise has long been linked to the Playstation platforms. He then showed a trailer for FFXIII (slated for released in early 2010) and quickly followed it up by saying that the team at Square Enix is always hard at work developing future games. So he showed a trailer for FFXIV, which will be exclusive to Playstation 3 when it launches (probably in 2011).

Things then took a bit of a funny turn, as two hardware developers from Sony came on stage to do a tech demonstration of the Playstation 3's latest “motion controller accessory”. It looks like the Wii Remote with a glowing ball on top. It worked rather nicely though, even using the Playstation Eye to track the player's movement in 3D space, allowing him to move around in the environment in real time and interact with the environment (sort of like the Wii Head Tracking demo, but with the Playstation Eye acting as the Wii Remote did). Even cooler though, was the fact that they were able to have one player use two of these, uh, “Playstaymotes?” at the same time, essentially allowing for dual pistol/sword/whatever item wielding. It was a really cool demo, and I'm betting that, in the right hands, it will bring a lot of fresh innovation to the Playstation 3. However, with all that said, it feels a bit late to be almost completely copying the Wii Remote. Wii MotionPlus is already releasing next week and will introduce the one of the final pieces in the motion control puzzle. This just felt like a Wii Remote with Wii MotionPlus, plus camera design.

The tech demo was followed up with a live demo for Mod Nation Racers from United Front. It's was designed to be under the Play, Create, Share model that LittleBigPlanet was designed on. It's very customizable, so that certainly fits. It also allows players to share tracks and characters, and play together. Success!

Seriously though Mod Nation Racers uses real time physics, it looks great, except for the racers, which are appear more like Xbox 360 Avatars, and it includes an extremely easy to use, full featured track creator, which they showed off by making a new track in less than five minutes. I don't just mean a roadway. I mean an entire track with mountains, a little village, animals and all kinds of other stuff. I can see this game being quite successful.

Finally, before the last live demo, came a trailer for a weird game called The Last Guardian, which features some kind of weird cat, dragon creature, and was followed by a trailer for Gran Turismo 5. The Briefing was ended off with a live demo of God of War III, which was cool, but didn't particularly impress me. It looks like one of those games you've got to play to get into it. Tretton finally came back on to reiterate the “only possible on Playstation” message and to close the briefing.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Sony's Media Briefing this year. They showed off a lot of cool stuff and it didn't bore the pants off of me. The announcement about the PSP Go, while not a surprise in the fact that it was going to be there, but by what they showed and by what it can do, was interesting. I'm certainly more interested in purchasing one than I ever was before (though I still don't plan to at the moment because I still have a perfectly good portable multimedia player in the form of my Zen Vision). The Playstation 3 showings, as well as the theme itself, really gave me a lot to reconsider concerning my thoughts on the system. I still don't plan to buy one either, but if I had one, I would be rushing to get some of the games.

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Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12