Sony E3 Event Round-Up

16 Jun 2010 at 02:21:18 by Peter Parrish

Sony's E3 press conference opened with some thinly-veiled (but somewhat welcome) jibes against Microsoft's poncho madness before prostrating itself on the altar of 3D.

After we'd just seen Nintendo fitting 3D into a neat, handheld package, Sony's attempts to sell us games on expensive 3D-ready televisions seemed a little ill-advised. The company appeared to be aware of this and repeatedly stressed that proper gaming naturally requires a massive tv set. It was then claimed that Sony is ready to do for 3D what the PS3 did for blu-ray.

Anybody thinking at this point that they'd seen enough motion controllers for one E3 had to come to terms with that position, as Sony demoed PlayStation Move at length. Killzone 3 (set for release in February 2011) was confirmed to be Move-ready and in full 3D, while the digs at Sony's rivals continued as the limitations of 'other motion technology' were hinted at.

A Move-specific title called Sorcery, scheduled for 2011, was shown off, which featured much waving and waggling of a magic wand (no, not like that.) More than forty developers and partners, we were told, are currently working on PlayStation Move titles. This includes a forthcoming Tiger Woods title, so obvious joke writers should probably get scribbling.

Unlike Kinect, Move actually has a price and will be arriving across the world in September 2010. "Everything you does matters to it," apparently. That's creepy.

Sony's Kevin Butler character invaded the stage for a mock call to arms that will have left games players either chuckling or weeping. Butler, it seems, is no Stephen Colbert - but he did have a couple of good lines and gave Kinect another bodyblow or two.

At this point, Sony felt the urge to introduce us to another fictional character given a personality purely for the purposes of advertising: Marcus. Marcus is a young lad who cares very deeply about the PSP, so he'll have been pleased to learn that seventy new games are heading to the platform, including Valkyria Chronicles and a PSP-specific God of War. At least he might have been pleased, were he not the invention of a soulless committee of advertising executives with one eye on the balance sheet.

Speaking of which, the "PlayStation Plus" membership scheme was announced, priced at $49/year.

Sony made us wait for any substantial game footage, then rattled through all of it at a fair old pace. LittleBigPlanet 2 demoed a few of the possibilities offered by its in-game creative tools, Dead Space 2 concluded its trailer from yesterday and Gabe Newell stopped by to bury the hatchet with Sony and announce Portal 2 for the PS3.

An edition of Final Fantasy that by now must be well into the hundreds showed a short cinematic featuring a cat-girl's arse and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood encouraged us to stab our friends. They meant in the game of course! ... Or DID they?

Who knows, because my mind was spinning from yet more game footage. Gran Turismo 5 was given a release date of 2 November 2010 and offered up a trailer that was frighteningly close to real life, while inFamous let us know that it'd be getting even inFamouser sometime in 2011.

Then an evil clown drove onto the stage and killed everybody invol ... ok, that's not true, he was just delivering David Jaffe so he could demonstrate Twisted Metal for the PS3. Fans of demonic comic performers driving automobiles and helicopters while shooting one another, rejoice.

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