We wanted to be surprised, we wanted to be awed, we wanted to believe that Sony had finally got it right and most of all we wanted to be able to brag again, just like we did in the glory days of the Playstation 2. Well, now that Sony’s E3 conference is over, JOE is sorry to report that all you will feel this year is a lingering sense of disappointment which despite confirming what we already knew, doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Quick Recap (sort of)
Things kicked off well with Sony’s 3-D presentation which highlighted an impressive range of games that will run in 3-D on the Playstation 3. Titles included a spectacular-looking Killzone3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the incredible Crysis 2 and Shaun White Snowboarding. It was a killer opening and great to see just how much weight Sony was putting behind the format. Conference attendees were all given viewing glasses for the presentation and their reactions to the games shown were nothing short of ecstatic.
After the stellar start to the proceedings, Sony immediately got bogged down in corporate chest beating which began to bore quickly as Sony waffled on about PS2 lifespans, sales numbers and marketing partnerships with Coca-Cola. Then, just as it had become almost unbearable, an appearance by Kevin Butler from Sony’s brilliant advertising spots pulled things back a bit as he made humorous stabs at the competition, and delivered a rousing call to arms for the loyal Playstation fans. This was all very nice, but had most of us here in the JOE office wishing Sony would just cut the crap and get to the new stuff.
Motion controls were thrust into the spotlight next with the full reveal of Playstastion Move and the new tech managed to underwhelm from the start. The demonstrations seemed to offer little more than Wii games with some Sony bells and whistles thrown into the mix, and on this evidence we doubt that Nintendo are too worried.
The games on offer did look polished and included Sorcery, SingStar Dance, Heroes on the Move, SOCOM 4, Heavy Rain: Move Edition, Echochrome 2, EyePet, Sports Champions, Tumble and Beat, Resident Evil: Gold Edition, Time Crisis: Razing Storm, Toy Story 3 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Overall the line up didn’t offer the core gamer much, but Sony did promise that there will be more than 40 titles for the Playstation Move by the end of the year.
The only surprise of the presentation came when Sony revealed that Playstation Move will launch first in Europe on September 15, with the rest of the world following soon after.
The PSP came next and you could tell that Sony’s heart just wasn’t in it, much like the audience who politely clapped and looked bored. Once again the presentation fell into corporate waffle with Playstation boss Jack Tretton looking like he was trying to convince himself and his business partners rather than the world’s gaming press. After the debacle that was the PSP Go, can we please let this system die now?
The oddest moment came when the premium version of the Playstaion Network (PSN) service was announced. Sony have long boasted that their online services were free rather than subscription based like XBOX Live and the premium package called Playstation Plus appears to be a way to monetise the service that must be costing them a small fortune to maintain.
Playstation Plus will offer subscribers free PSN games, add-ons, exclusive content and the ability to have updates pushed to the PS3 even when the system is off. Sounds like a decent deal for €49.99 a year, but the catch here is that you can only enjoy the free content if you continue with your subscription, so it looks like they are really trying to lock people into continued membership.
All other services like multiplayer will remain free, but it’s clear that Sony is looking to get money out of their fan base.
The rest of the show was a series of game highlights with only the announcement of Gran Turismo 5 getting the blood going with its release finally locked down for November 2. Infamous 2 was also announced for next year as was Twisted Metal, a franchise that seems to have a huge following in the States for reasons we cannot fathom.
Some long winded presentations from EA and UbiSoft offered nothing beyond exclusive content which failed to impress and the only true surprise announcement came from Valve who will be making their first PS3 game with Portal 2, a game which they claim will have its best version on the PS3.
Highlights
3D gaming
The full impact of the 3-D presentation was lost on viewers who weren’t in the auditorium, but given the sheer excellence of games, such as Crysis 2 and Killzone 3, that will be available in the format, it’s impossible not to be excited by the prospect of High Definition 3-D in your living room. Sony has probably made one of the best moves here and their commitment to three dimensional gaming will allow them to pull ahead of the competition in time for the next generation of home consoles. Our only niggle is the price of those new TV’s we will all have to buy to experience it, something that will put 3-D beyond most of us at the moment. For the hardcore gamer with a disposable income, this more than anything else shows that Sony is committed to them in a major way.
The number of exclusive games was down again this year with star PS3 developers Naughty Dog and Insomniac notable by their absence. To compensate for this, Sony has focused a lot of attention on a handful of first party games and two in particular stand out as reasons to own a PS3.
Gran Turismo 5
Playstations flagship racer led the charge on the software offensive and at last the game will see the light of day when it launches in America on November 2. The European release date hasn’t been announced yet but we can’t see Sony delaying this any further as the Playstation faithful just won’t tolerate any further setbacks. The 3-D version of the game will also be available for all you flush racing junkies.
Little Big Planet 2
The original Little Big Planet was a gem of a game that was only held back by the fiddly controls that seemed to cry out for the precision and user friendliness of the Wii Remote. The good news here is that the sequel will be compatible with Playstation Move and the game itself has morphed from a charming platformer with creative tools to a full games design platform which offers gamers the opportunity to create shooters, fighters, racers and just about everything in between. It’s impressive stuff and is a real pleasure to see that Sony continues to back such innovative titles.
Other Highlights included Killzone 3, Twisted Metal, Infamous 2 and DC Universe Online as well as the next Final Fantasy online game. The PS3 will also host an impressive array of 3rd party games such as Dead Space 2 and Medal of Honour, both of which will come with exclusive content for Playstation.
Lowlights and The Verdict.
The PSP
Last year, Sony scored a massive own goal with the PSP Go, a hugely overpriced redesign that alienated its retail partners and was met with indifference from consumers as they realised that the slick new machine offered no real benefits over the standard model and, in the case of the absent UMD drive, made the machine incompatible with their existing library of games.
This year the disappointment was even more palpable as Sony bravely tried to hold up the aging portable as the pinnacle of portable gaming, something which is utterly laughable in the face of the sublime Nintendo 3DS. We knew it and they knew it, but they heroically tried to save face with an advertisement show reel that gave us Kevin Butler and that annoying kid from Role Models desperately attempting to convince us that the PSP was a cutting edge, no compromise gaming device. Two words: epic fail.
Despite the odd classic, the PSP has never offered a compelling games catalogue and we were all hoping for Sony to pull the rabbit out of the hat and wow us with the PSP2. This didn’t happen and left us JOE gamers wondering if Sony has simply stopped trying to compete with Nintendo and had thrown in the towel altogether.
Playstation Move
Sony’s motion control offering is, form a hardware point of view, a technologically advanced and an elegant evolution of what is currently available on the Wii with obvious increases in precision. Particularly impressive is the one-to-one tracking that the controllers deliver. These pick up the slightest movement of the person holding them and precisely represent them on screen.
Sadly, that’s where the good news ends because make no mistake this is Sony making a play for the massive amount of money that Nintendo has made through its exploitation of the casual market. The best that can be said for the games on display is that they are pretty to look at, but in no way do they represent a step forward for motion controls. The two games used to showcase Move, Tiger Woods 11 and Sorcery, failed to generate any kind of buzz or indicate that Sony and EA had innovated in the gameplay department.
Tiger Woods looked like it played well but seemed to offer what was as already available through the Motion Plus-enabled version on the Wii. Sorcery was a kid’s game that offered impressive Harry Potterish spell casting in a game that is sure to leave core gamers cold.
One thing that might save Playstation Move is the PS3’s older audience who should embrace a more diverse and mature selection of games, a theory that will be tested early next year with the PS3 version of Dead Space: Extraction. The flip side to this is if the almost-inevitable flood of shovelware and party games that has already blighted Wii end up burying Playstation Move before it’s had a chance to fly.
The price is the only thing that’s right, with the full set-up only costing €90 when it launches on 15 September and the price o the Sony console may make it a more inviting prospect than Microsoft’s Kinect, which is looking like it may cost twice as much.
One thing is clear: Sony are going to have to work an awful lot harder than this to convince their core audience to invest in Move and even harder to convince Wii owners that they need to spend €400 in order to trade up
Our Verdict.
Sony finally laid their cards on the table and they were exactly the cards everyone thought they had. 3-D was the biggest winner here with an impressive collection of titles that showed Sony’s commitment to the format and may prove in time to be the biggest weapon in the Playstation arsenal.
Everything else was solid but failed to set the world on fire and the PSP presentation was the final nail in the portable’s coffin. Playstation Move was just a blatant play for a piece of the casual market with a few small fringe benefits for core gamers.
Looks like Nintendo has won the day, again.
Leo Stiles
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