Tag: press conference

2337: Sony Gets It

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I stayed up and watched Sony’s E3 press conference tonight, as it’s usually a good show. This year it perhaps wasn’t their strongest performance compared to some of their other recent efforts — last year in particular being a very memorable highlight — but it was still an enjoyable presentation.

The thing I like about Sony’s presentations in particular is that they never forget why they’re there: for the games, for the players. Sony’s presentation this year was almost minimalist in the amount of explanation and talking there was: rather than hours of Andrew House extolling the virtues of the PlayStation’s OS and additional services, the team instead elected largely to let the game footage and trailers do the talking.

And for sure, Sony certainly seems to have a solid lineup in the coming year. Of particular note were the PlayStation VR titles, which included a surprisingly good-looking Resident Evil VII (which, in the absence of a new Silent Hill game, very much appeared to be going down the “psychological horror” route, a decision that I absolutely endorse) and, of all things, an absolutely gobsmacking-looking new Call of Duty that appeared to feature seamless transitions between wandering around a capital ship, flying a small fighter craft, hopping out in zero gravity to cause mischief, then jumping back in when the mission was complete.

PlayStation VR is probably the most exciting thing Sony has lined up in the near future, and it’s coming relatively soon: it’s set for an October release. At the moment I’m having some difficulty picturing how it will work, particularly after having had a go with the room-scale gameplay of the HTC Vive at my friend Tim’s house (an experience which I will write about at some point soon, since I haven’t already) but I have faith Sony will do something cool with it.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about PlayStation VR, though, is the fact that, as a console VR platform, it’s likely to give VR as a whole a kick up the backside into starting to produce full-scale games rather than the more experimental fare that make up the majority of the Vive and Oculus Rift libraries at present. Its (relatively) affordable price point also puts it within reach of consumer electronics enthusiasts, too, so it’s going to be one of the main ways everyone starts getting VR headsets in their houses, I think. And I’m really excited to have a go on some of the games Sony was showing off.

So while there weren’t any huge bombshells in Sony’s presentation — apart from a release date for The Last Guardian, finally, along with confirmation that Hideo Kojima is indeed working on something that looks both baffling and awesome — it was a solid showing. Not their best, but nothing to be ashamed of either. And once again, while Microsoft, Ubisoft and EA all pander to their investors, Sony proves that they know that without the people who play the games, there wouldn’t be an E3 at all.

1310: Nice Job, Sony

It was a day of press conferences at Gamescom in Germany today — always a long, tiring day, so forgive me if tiredness gets the better of me and I either start making ridiculous typos or fall asleep on my keyboard.

Out of the three conferences we saw today (or heard about second-hand in the case of Microsoft, who weren’t streaming their event), for my money, Sony’s was clearly the best. For my particular tastes, anyway.

What’s kind of cool, though, is that in each of the three cases — Microsoft, EA, Sony — there were clear target audiences, and while sometimes they overlapped, for most of the time they were very distinct from one another. This is good. This makes things exciting and interesting, and means we don’t keep seeing the same things over and over again.

The big divide seen today came largely between Sony versus Microsoft and EA. The latter put out huge, dubstep-fuelled trailers featuring lots of shooting and sports and other manly pursuits. The former opened the show with Shuhei Yoshida quietly playing with the console live on stage, closely followed by one of its least exciting games (Gran Turismo) accompanied not by dubstep, but with some rather stirring orchestral/choral music.

Microsoft and EA have their audiences — the people who enjoy their triple-A blockbuster experiences; the people who enjoy playing sports games; the people who are happy to play nothing but games with Battlefield in their title — and that’s cool. But it was even cooler to see Sony catering to its own niche rather than trying to emulate Microsoft. Some gorgeous looking independent titles; some solid support for the Vita; some intriguing looking exclusives — good stuff, and it got me far more excited than Microsoft and EA’s stuff. And that’s fine — I’ve long thought that various companies should specialise their output a little more rather than attempting to, as Jim Sterling so frequently mocks, “appeal to a wider audience”.

Interestingly, opinions have been a little split today. For the most part, my Twitter feed was enthusiastic about Sony’s conference while it was happening, but I’ve seen a few people expressing disappointment. Those who were particularly disappointed were either 1) in Microsoft and EA’s target audience, which is understandable because Sony very obviously aimed in the opposite direction, or 2) fans of Japanese games, of which there weren’t any on display. Still, there’s always TGS for the latter, at least, so it’s a little premature to worry about the PS4 — and I remain convinced that Sony platforms will remain the place to be for Japanese titles, especially if their publishing partners teased back when the PS4 was first announced are anything to go by.

Anyway. My eyelids are drooping so I’m off to sleep.