Although there weren’t many major surprises at Sony’s E3 press conference this year (thanks to several pre-E3 leaks), the company managed to impress the audience with its future line-up of quality titles for both the PS3 and PSP. While Sony was proud to showcase trailers and live demos of its superior exclusives, the PSP Go! (aka ‘the worst kept secret of E3‘) was the highlight of the show.
Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., officially announced that the PSP Go! will not replace the current PSP-3000 model but will stand alongside it when it is released on Oct. 1st 2009. This new model is 15% lighter and 43% smaller than the PSP-3000 and utilises a sliding screen that covers the face buttons. Although the UMD drive has been removed, it promotes the feature of direct downloads from the PSStore and the new Media Go! which will replace the previous Media Manager. Kaz stated that this does not mean the UMD format will become obsolete as it will still be sold.
Sony also presented live demos including:
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- Massive Action Game (MAG) – actual 256 players live
- Assassin’s Creed II
- Mod Nation Racers
- God of War III
Exclusive games that were revealed were:
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- MAG
- Gran Turismo PSP
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP) – a true sequel to MGS3
- Agent – from Rockstar Games
- Final Fantasy XIV (online)
- Mod Nation Racers – the LittleBigPlanet of racing
- The Last Guardian – Team Ico’s masterpiece
- Gran Turismo 5
- God of War III – March 2010 release date
The day before, Microsoft was proud to show a tech demo of their Project Natal motion-sensing and voice-recognition camera. Sony made it known that they are also working on motion-sensing by use of a new prototype controller and the PS Eye. It wasn’t as impressive as Project Natal, but unique and interesting nonetheless. This motion controller is due for release in Spring 2010.
For those of you who wish to watch the entire E3 press conferences, here are the links to the rebroadcasting videos below:
[Via CNet (1), CNet (2), Mirror, DigitalSomething]
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To me the ps3 control was much more impressive than natal. When we saw the tech demo of the way it was used for fps and the bow and arrows u have to think, when playing a fps with natal what are you going to do to fire when there’s no button as a trigger? Certain things need buttons. Also, what’s gonna happen if u wanna play a horror in the dark? ahh…. no one thought of that huh?
Totally agree with you Luke.. There must be some tangibility at least.
And the Natal tech is very similar to the PSEye anyway.
Yeah I guess you guys are right. What throw me off though was how this guy was telling his partner to kill the skeleton to the far right and he was taking forever to aim at it. I mean, if they’ve probably been testing this motion controller for the longest while and have surely been practising their presentation, the guy must know how to properly aim a bow-and-arrow. That’s why I believe this controller wasn’t ready to be shown. It needs quite a lot of tweaking instead of an announced date. But yes, this motion-controller presentation needed to be made if Sony had to make an attack on Natal, even if it still wasn’t ready. But, that bow-and-arrow aiming still bothers me up to now….it too long to aim to the far right.