E3 Conference Summary Part 3 - Sony

Last but not least, in part 3 of the E3 conferences, I'll be writing about Sony's conference which was just under the two hour mark. It wasn't boring though and there were some surprises, especially in the PSP section. Prediction wise, I was pretty far off on the Sony conference, so make sure to read on to get the a summary of the whole presentation.

Sony started the presentation by spouting figures and making sure to let everyone know the PS2 is still going strong with 100 titles to be released this year. The rest isn't worth noting.

After a bit, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves gameplay was shown and as expected, it looks awesome and improves on the original in every way. There seems to be even more detail and one bit where Nathan stands up high overlooking a city was very impressive.



MAG was played with the full 256 players online. It seems to be the only redeeming feature of the game as it looked incredibly generic and failed to impress me. Maybe it will be fun to play, but it will depend on the objectives and reliability of the servers. Respawning seemed quick and the game is coming this fall.



Next, the worst kept secret was shown. It's called the PSP Go and features the same PSP hardware except a missing UMD drive, 16GB on-board flash memory and sliding screen as well as bluetooth. It was made clear that it won't be replacing the current PSP-3000 model and is for digital download fans. It will cost US$ 249, Euro 249 for each respective region and be released on October 1. Japane will recieve it one month later at a price of 26,800 Yen. Make no mistake, that's a hard price to swallow for this piece of equipment. I have this nagging voice screaming FAIL, but we shall see. It looks okay.



Big surprise next. Gran Turismo PSP announced to be launching with the PSP Go on October 1. Featuring 800 cars, 35 tracks and running at a constant 60fps, it's just freaking awesome. And here I was predicting it wouldn't show up this year either, what a pleasent surprise. Only a video trailer was shown, no gameplay footage, but the game was playable at E3.

Another Metal Gear Solid game was announced, titled Peace Walker and is set 10 years after Metal Gear Solid 3. Apparently the game will be a true sequel and not a spinoff title. Sounds good to me. This one has a 2010 release date and is looking quite good indeed.



Another surprising announcement. Resident Evil is coming to PSP. A whole new game, PSP exclusive. Along with LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm Arctic Edge, Assassin's Creed, SOCOM FTB 3, Soul Calibur, Jak and Daxter and more, you can see the PSP is having a much needed revival. It's looking to be a bright future for the handheld.

Onto PS3 now, there will be a new IP from Rockstar exclusively for the PS3 known as "Agent". Expect a James Bond type game with GTA type gameplay. Nothing was shown, but I'm sure that's what it will be.

Assassin's Creed 2 for PS3 is played. It looks fantastic and the game seems to have been improved in every way. I'm really looking forward to this one.



A Final Fantasy XIII video was shown, nothing new here. This was followed by (surprise) an announcement of Final Fantasy XIV which will be released next year! It's an online only title and is a PS3 exclusive.



Not to be outdone by Microsoft, Sony showed a motion controller of their own, similar to a Wiimote, except it seemed to very accurate. Use it as a sword, bow and arrow, gun, it all seems to work well. Again, without any actual games, we'll see how well it works.



A game called ModNation Racers was shown. It's a Kart game, which takes it's cue from LBP for the ability to create levels and share them. The track editor was very impressive and easy to use. A decent track was created in five minutes. The game itself though, didn't look so interesting or good, but it's coming out next year so it might get a lot of improvements.



Team ICO showed off their next game titled The Last Guardian. Graphics looks fantastic and it's sure to be a good game.



A teaser trailer for Gran Turismo 5 was shown. No additional info or release date. I won't bother posting it, it's not worth watching.

Everyone was excited to see a demo of God of War 3 at the end. It looks good of course, but it's just more of the same. The presentation ended with many a "Awww' from the audience as they wanted to see more of the game.



Overall a great presentation with some surprises, especially on the PSP side of things and Gran Turismo PSP and Resident Evil PSP made me a fan of the PSP once more. Seriously, I thought the system was on the brink of death. That's all for this year, hope you enjoyed it!