So if there's a lesson I've learned from E3 so far it's that liveblogging without 3G is essentially a fool's errand. When there is wifi, it rarely works, and so usually they don't even bother to try and set one up. But here I am in the Shrine Auditorium for the Sony press conference to write it up live, even though I'm just going to have to put it up in one lump anyway.
11:11 am - We've started really late, which means I'm almost certainly going to be late for my appointments on the show floor. So I would have appreciated not having to watch this very overlong video introducing the brand.
11:12 am - Here's Jack Tretton, he's always seemed so awkward on stage, but he's already made a joke about the PSP Go press leak, so I guess he's improved?
11:13 am - The audience feeling here is so different from Nintendo. People clapped a video that showed nothing new enthusiastically, and keep wanting to clap for anything Jack Tretton says. "2009 will be our best year ever," he claims.
11:15 am - It's so interesting the way they keep PS2 at equal billing to the PS3 and PSP. I guess it's still very alive, even with such a poor selection of games normally on the shelves.
It's weird as well that Tretton talked about how they drove sales of the PS2 in Canada (specifically). Made it sound like we were a developing country.
11:17 am - I actually really hope they announce a slim PS3. Good God the PS3 is such an ugly system. Dreaming, I wish they'd reinstate backwards compatibility while they do it.
11:18 am - And in case you're wondering why I'm just wittering on, it's because Tretton is just blathering about statistics and numbers.
11:20 am - At least now he's introduced someone from Naughty Dog to talk about
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. There's a multiplayer beta for the title starting tonight at midnight.
11:21 am - Gameplay footage. The Shrine Auditorum kind of sucks for this sort of thing as the gradient is very shallow, and the guy in front of me just has a massive head.
11:22 am - People are crazy here. There are some people whooing and clapping for literally anything that happens on screen. Drake looks out at a vista that's comparable to something in
Assassin's Creed. People whoo. Drake ziplines. People clap. A helicopter appears. People start speaking in tongues and developing stigmata.
11:24 am - Don't get me wrong, it looks good, but people's responses seem forced.
11:25 am - Live gameplay for
MAG - they're showing us a live 256 player battle. Neat.
11:31 am - The nearest description of the title is as an RTS in which you play a unit, and some players are commanders, but it seems so unlikely that 128 people are going to work together to a common goal.
11:33 am - A liliac PSP
Hanna Montana bundle. How about that.
11:34 am - Kaz Hirai has come out. He's here to officially announce the PSP Go. He's got a white one in his hand. He's making a big deal out of continuing to support the PSP-3000 at the same time, which is fair enough of course.
11:38 am - A replacement for the media manager, Media Go, and a new application for the PSP called Sense Me, which is similar to Apple's Genius thingy (which I have never, ever bothered to use.)
11:39 am - All PSP titles will be downloadable and in stores. It'd be nice if you bought a UMD if you could download it as well, no?
11:40 am - PSP Go will me in stores on October 1st for $249.99 (US). That doesn't seem like very good value at all compared to the PSP-3000 at $169.99.
11:42 am - Kazunouri Yamauchi from Polyphony Digital has come out to discuss a new
Motor Toon game for PSP... Or to actually announce
Gran Turismo PSP FOR REALZ
11:43 am - He is holding up a PSP Go that I can barely see with it apparently running at 60 frames per second. They are taking the **bleep** if they don't show some footage on the big screens.
Anyway, he's just blathering about features - bunch of tracks, loads of cars (800), single player races, a mission mode, ad-hoc car trading - and really pushing that it's a full
Gran Turismo on PSP, not a cut-down portable version.
OK, so they are showing it on the show floor, and they are showing a video now. Admittedly this video is about as far away from gameplay footage as you can get.
11:49 am - Kaz Hirai just said how much he's looking forward to trading cars from Kazunori's garage into his garage, and made it sound entirely like a sexual metaphor.
11:50 am - Kojima's here to present
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a new PSP title that is to be a true sequel to
Metal Gear Solid 3, set ten years after (in the 1970s).
11:51 am - Kojima's producing, writing the script, and his
MGS4 team is to be involved too. "It's not a spin off, it's not a side story."
11:52 am - Trailer time! Yep, it sure does look like a full
MGS title. Kind of hard to explain other than that.
11:58 am - Hey, Jack Tretton is announcing
Resident Evil Portable for PSP. No real details though.
12:02 pm - A fairly long video showing off a lot of the titles upcoming for PSP, reminding me what a great little system it can be.
Little Big Planet, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, Fat Princess, Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe, Motostorm: Artic Edge; the list goes on. I should play my PSP more.
12:04 pm -
Final Fantasy VII is now available for download on the PSP. Impressive, and they're promising 50 more PSOne titles for it in the coming year. Still not good enough - there are so many PSOne games out there! Just release them all!
12:05 pm - Talking about
PlayStation Home now. I didn't realise anyone really bothered to still use it after fiddling with it at launch.
The screen has a bunch of home avatars on it. Urgh. They're so creepy looking.
12:07 pm - They showed a short trailer, and amusingly the applause was so weak afterwards. This is from a crowd that freaked out over Drake ziplining.
12:08 pm - In comparison to the PSP video, the video they're showing now for upcoming PS3 games is weak sauce. The only game worth remarking on is K
ing of Fighters XII so far, and even then only because it's just nice that they mentioned it.
12:11 pm - I spoke too soon - They had some short footage of the Toronto-based Capybara Games'
Critter Crunch, so yay for them!
12:12 pm - Oh, and how intriguing, a brief snippet of
Bioshock 2 footage, which makes it look exactly like the first Bioshock. Hmm.
12:13 pm - A new PlayStation-exclusive title from Rockstar North,
Agent. 'Mon the Scotland!
12:14 pm - Absolutely no other details other than they're making it, though. But here are some dudes from Ubisoft to show us some gameplay of Assassin's Creed II, which was notably absent from yesterday's Ubisoft briefing.
12:15 pm - So apparently Leonardo Da Vinci is going to be an integral character, creating inventions for the player (like a glider). I guess that's cool and all but it sounds so stupid.
12:17 pm - It looks good; reminding me how fun it was to run around as Altair in the original game. But it's still obviously got the problem of the original game, where you're not so much a silent assassin as a lunatic who loves murdering people while other people watch, before having to go on the run from guards.
12:21 pm - A trailer for
Final Fantasy XIII. The English voice acting is poor as usual. It'd be really nice if they included a Japanese language track, but I doubt it.
12:25 pm - OK, they're going to show footage of
Final Fantasy XIV. SERIOUSLY. And it's going to be Playstation 3 exclusive. This is a fairly, no, completely, bonkers announcement.
12:26 pm - I mean, it's for real and everything. AND it's revealed that it's actually
Final Fantasy XIV ONLINE.
Say whaaaaaat!
12:27 pm - Hmm, he's talking about motion control now. Dangerous territory. So what are they going to show us?
12:29 pm - Oh, it's a controller. Yep, a motion controller with a glowing sphere for the PlayStation Eye to track. The guy who is showing this - whose name I have unfortunately not taken down - is awkward as hell, and I think it's probably because he's mortified to be showing this after seeing Project Natal yesterday. Sorry, mate.
12:30 pm - This controller has true one to one tracking, but then so does the Wii with MotionPlus (well, more or less). However, what is quite nice is that with the PlayStation Eye you can see augmented reality that makes it look lik you're holding a weapon, which works pretty well and does look neat.
12:32 pm - A smattering of clapping for the combined use of the PlayStation Eye and controller to allow FPS gameplay. "You can't do this without buttons," they're saying, trying to force home that they felt that they needed a motion controller.
12:35 pm - It's weird, because this really does feel like a specific response to the Wii - one that might only split the market on PS3 - more than it seems to present anything new at all.
12:37 pm - This is so impressive - in 2006!
12:39 pm - Except it's launching in Spring 2010.
12:41 pm - They have announced
ModNation Racers, a new
LittleBigPlanet-esque racer. Man, this is press conference is going to run really late, lots of people are leaving.
12:43 pm - The inspiration behind design of characters in the game is the vinyl collectible figures of designers like KidRobot. Pretty decent idea, but they don't have anywhere near the charisma of Sackboy.
12:44 pm - And it pretty much looks like
Mario Kart (obviously.)
12:46 pm - Of course, the selling point is the track creation, which looks easy (certainly easier than
LittleBigPlanet) but less interesting, because it's not about playing with physics and less multifunction - you can only ever make another racing track.
12:49 pm - I guess this game is cute, but it's hard to care at all! Well, it is being made in Vancouver, so as a Canadian product I do support it.
12:50 pm - The energy in this room was so clearly "we really want to leave!" but it's changed since they're now showing a trailer for Fumito Ueda's newest game, now called
The Last Guardian.
12:55 pm - Seems to be a game about a little boy who looks after a big, sad-eyed puppybird monster, and also seems intent to break my heart.
12:56 pm - A trailer for
Gran Turismo 5. There's not much to say about it though.
12:58 pm - I can't believe this is still going on. How many people are going to miss appointments? I've already missed one!They're going to show us some of
God of War III now.
1:00 pm - Anyway, it looks fine, like more
God of War. The violence is so grotesque though. I really have never had that much urge to watch a man cut a horse's belly open and pull its entrails out.
1:05 pm - Tretton's back on stage to end the briefing. Why did they end with
God of War III though? This whole thing was bizarrely paced.
Message Edited by MathewKumar on 06-02-2009 01:52 PM
Message Edited by JS on 07-26-2009 01:28 PM
buzzbishop
on:
The Canadian Apple Tax
