B3yond the Sony E3 Press Conference

Posted by Mark Salmela on 07.15.2008

411’s Mark Salmela gives his in-depth report on Sony’s E3 2008 press conference.



Welcome everyone to this very special look at the Sony press conference hosted by yours truly. I'm sitting here parked with laptop in hand, ready to rock out with my cock out for every Sony blockbuster *hopefully* about to be announced. Just kidding guys, I'm not THAT big of a fanboy. But seriously, I'm sitting here just minutes away from the Sony press conference. I've got pictures of Cliffy B. and Reggie burning right next to my TV, which means I'm ready to go. So with that said *and the fire department pissed*, let's get to my in-depth look at the conference!

I see a bunch of PlayStation logo's flashing, PS1 IS COMING BACK!

Oh wait, that's just the standard PlayStation logo… My bad.

Any who, the conference starts off with a bunch of triangles, squares, circles, and x's flashing in my grill. I think they're trying to give me a seizure. We then see a video of games coming to the PS3, past and future, for both PSP and PS3.

Jack Trenton takes the stage, sporting a nice B3yond the Report polo *it's just every feed and picture cropped off the logo, trust me*. Jack sucks up and talks about how hectic E3 is and goes over the history of E3 and the convention center. I'm not amused Jack. Get to the games. Apparently Sack Boy is a household name now along the likes of Kratos and Solid Snake? OK.

Jack pimps the 10 year life-spans of the PS1, PS2, and now PS3, going over how most of their big games didn't come out until years into their lifecycles. Are they making excuses as to why the PS3 has few big games? Jack what are you doing? Where's Kaz? Jack, we want new games dammit! Stop talking about MGS4, we all know it's awesome.

Finally Jack realizes that he's dying up there, and says it's time to announce "the ass kicking games of 2008". A video for the PS3 is shown. We're 15 minutes into the conference and it's finally starting to get interesting. Resistance 2 trailer is shown. Some giant 300 foot tall alien thing comes on screen and starts eating Hale's rockets. He ain't taking no crap. Hale start running, with the monster destroying everything in sight, so far so good. The resolution on the couch looks terrible… But in all seriousness the demo is kicking ass. Sadly the demo ends, leaving me wanting more *which is a good thing*.

Ted Price gets on stage talking about Resistance 2. Story details, gameplay details, the whole 9 yards *although it's nothing new*. Another Resistance 2 trailer is shown. Pretty good stuff. Jack's back, and it's Little Big Planet time. Jack's doing a lot of pimping, what a tool. Alright, Little Big Planet demo.

The Media Molecule guys come on stage for a Little Big Planet demo. Sackboy is sporting a Garnett jersey. As a Minnesotan I'm dying. Instead of giving a slideshow powerpoint, Jack's points come up on screen as part of a Little Big Planet level. This is actually cool. They should do this for every presentation. PS3 greatest hits are announced. $29.99 each: Resistance, Motorstorm, WarHawk, Fight Night, COD3, Need for Speed, R6 Vegas, Assassin's Creed, Oblivion, and Ninja Gaiden. Good stuff, it's all presented in Little Big Planet still.

Little Big Planet will be on display for demos later on this week. Talk switches to PS2, and 130 titles are still coming to PS2 this year. They show a video of PS2 games coming this year. Nothing too big is shown, mostly multiplatform games. BTW Media Molecule guys are gone, no more Little Big Planet *insert frowny face here*. Talk switches to Buzz, with Buzz coming to PS3 and PSP.

For whatever reason this fall Sony's introducing a PS2 bundle with Lego Batman. Seriously, Lego Batman? What happened to putting focus on PS3? Talk switches to the PlayStation Network. Sony plans to make your PSN account universal across the PC, PSP, and PS3. Another announcement that should have been there years ago. The PSN has seen 180 million downloads, impressive.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty is a Ratchet game coming to the PSN this fall. It's a direct sequel to Tools of Destruction. It looks and plays just like Tools of Destruction, which is impressive for a PSN title. It'll cost $15 and be available later this fall. A bunch of cool PSN titles are shown, a lot of new ones and a few we already knew about like Pixel Junk Eden. It's actually a really cool video with a lot of awesome games. Pain Amusement Park, Fl0wer, lots of cool stuff. Ragdoll Kung Fu is one of the new PSN titles shown that looks cool.

A video highlighting Gran Turismo TV is shown. Why this got presentation time is beyond me, because it's nothing cool. Jack pimps Trophies, and they better be holding off Kaz for something cool. Jack says the wait will be worth it when Home comes out. I'm currently enjoying a good laugh. A Home video is shown, it still looks cool, but I'm sick of waiting for it. Jack pimps the new Sony movie download service, which just like Microsoft and Netflix, I don't care. Sorry guys, I'm here for the games. I'm not here to be told I can rent movies. I want games, and lots of them, nothing else. The video service will be in the PlayStation Store, although it gets its own section separate from games *which is a good thing*. Thankfully it looks like there'll be a lot of movies when this thing launches.

We're now one hour into the Sony press conference and we've seen almost nothing on the PSP, and hardly any disc-based PS3 games. Sony, I hate you right now. You're doing everything I told you not to do. I want some f***ing games! Jack, get off the stage! The video store will be up tonight. Huzzah!

Talk finally switches to the PSP as I burn my Jack Trenton signed photograph. Besides the God of War and Madden PSP bundles, the PSP will have a Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters bundle. Didn't that game come out like a year and a half ago? The PSP is still $199. Resistance: Retribution is coming to the PSP. It looks pretty good; you play as some guy who isn't Nathan Hale. Jack pimps Patapon 2, LocoRoco 2, and a video pimps other PSP titles like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Super Star Dust portable. Not bad, but I'm still waiting for the PS3 games.

Finally, oh freaking finally, Sony talks about the PS3. Sony talks about Life with PlayStation, where users can interact and upload videos to YouTube and what-not. Jack quickly switches talk to SOE, and pimps DC Universe. Some dude from SOE starts doing push-ups, and I get the biggest laugh I've had so far at E3. Better than Trenton pimping Home. DC Universe looks like a really cool MMO, and it's nice to see the DC MMO is still coming since the Marvel MMO fell apart. This SOE guy brags about his accomplishments for Guild Wars, and gets a pity applause from the crowd. The SOE guy gets cut off before he can finish speaking and the trailer for DC Universe plays. Good stuff.

The 80 GB Core PS3 will sell for $400 later this year. Good stuff although they seemed to hint that it won't have backwards compatibility *they said the 80 GB core will mimic the 40 GB*. Are they getting rid of the 40 GB? They didn't announce a price drop or anything for the 40 GB, I think they're getting rid of it. Oh well, they should just have an 80 GB PS3 anyways. $400 isn't bad either. A video with a bunch of 3rd party dev's pimping the PS3 plays on screen. If they love it so much how come all their games are lead sku on the 360? Debunked this video…

1 hour and 20 minutes into the conference and I'm very upset at how this conference is going. Where are the exclusives? Oooh, just as I say that Jack name-drops some exclusives like inFamous. A video showing some PS3 exclusives plays, like Little Big Planet, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, MGS4, SOCOM Confrontation, Resistance 2, the Agency, Naruto *oh god*, SingStar, Buzz Quiz TV, and Killzone 2.

Jack pimps God of War 3 with a trailer. It was nothing more than a teaser, but it'll do. Jack talks about inFamous and shows a new trailer. It looks cool, and it's coming spring 2009. Jack finally debuts a new game, and shows off Zipper's new game MAG *Massive Action Game*. MAG will have 256 players on the PS3 online. Holy shit. The 256 player teams will be broken down into smaller squads *squads of 8*. I like this, although this means Zipper's no longer doing a SOCOM title *SOCOM Confrontation is coming by Slant 6*. A trailer for MAG is shown. OMG it looks awesome! Resistance 2's 60 players have been trumped! Jack ends the conference there. What the hell happened to Kaz?

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Well. Sony's press conference is over. Those were my live thoughts; here are my afterthoughts to conclude the presentation.

Overall Sony's press conference was a little of a disappointment. I have been saying for weeks that Sony's press conference should be about one thing, games! And those games needed to have been for the PS3 and PSP, and been exclusive.

Instead, Sony kept talking about the PS2. Yeah, it's great that the PS2 still sells well. But the fact is that it's time to move on, and the PS2 should not be receiving air time at E3. Sony should be putting all of its focus on the PSP and PS3, and not spreading itself too thin by trying to support the PS2. I like the PS2, but it's time to move on.

Another thing Sony did too much was brag about PS3 and PSP sales. Yeah, the consoles are selling decently well, whoopty do. I want you to make me feel safe for buying a PS3 and PSP by showing me what's coming up in the future. Sony's video service is pretty cool, but just like Microsoft and Netflix I don't care. Yeah, there are people who care about downloading movies, but I'm not one of them. I've never claimed to have an impartial view. Call me old school, but I buy a video game console for video games, not for downloading movies. Being able to download movies and playing Blu-Ray is cool, but it should have been a quick side-note, not one of Sony's biggest E3 announcements.

Microsoft showed off a lot of live demos at its E3 press conference. Sure, most of the games had a lot of glitches and didn't run as smoothly as they would have liked, but at least we knew it was gameplay. Besides Little Big Planet and Resistance 2, nothing was actually given time and shown off as a live demo. I wanted more games, and more time given to games.

It just seems like Sony was really hurting up there a lot after losing Final Fantasy 13 as an exclusive. Hell, they didn't even mention the game at their press conference. It was really sad to see Sony up there like this, because they looked like a wounded dog up their most of the time. Sure MAG was great and awesome, but it wasn't enough to save the show.

I'll be back on Friday morning with an E3 themed edition of B3yond the Report, but I can say right now Microsoft beat Sony at E3 this year. Sony's performance wasn't a disaster, and they were definitely better than Nintendo, but they got beat by Microsoft. Hell, where was Killzone 2? Why couldn't we get a demo on that? How about more time to games like Little Big Planet? I saw pretty much nothing on SOCOM Confrontation. Where's Kaz? Where's Team Ico's next game? Where's Tekken 6? Where are your big exclusives Sony? If I had to review Sony's press conference I'd go a straight 5/10, with MAG being the only thing saving the conference from being considered "bad".