Sony @ E3 2013 - Conference Rundown

After sitting through both of the E3 conferences for someone else I thought it was about time that my own little blog got a sense of how I felt the Sony offerings went.

Their show started with Jack Tretton on stage; a gentleman who has the guile for this sort of thing and the ability to hold a rampant audience. He is both witty and has served Sony well at the conferences since the departure of John ‘The Turncoat’ Harrison. We also got a quick glimpse at the new Killzone game in action – nothing out of the ordinary here when compared to everything we’ve already seen.

His introduction set the pace for the show by grafting montage and the style of graphics you set up in a rush Powerpoint presentation – which was probably the reason for the 10 minute delayed start. The conference went in the same direction as Microsoft with the Vita and PS3 being billed initially. Tretton spoke about the sales figures for the Vita which smelt a little bit desperate.  Interestingly though he did mention that there are 85 titles launching on Vita by the end of the year – at the current rate of good quality titles you can expect 5 worth-while purchases.

The most exciting news for the Vita is the upcoming Walking Dead 400 Days which is due for release this summer. Telltale did so well with the XBLA/PSN offerings that I’m almost tempted to but a Vita for this series alone.

Tretton then moved onto the PS3 and the imminent releases of GT6 and Beyond: Two Souls. He also touched on Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed The Last of Us which isn’t even out until Friday. All three of these titles look fantastic and certainly put the end of the PS3 lifecycle to bed in a positive manner.

 
It was also pushed over that Puppeteer and Rain are also inbound from Studio Japan while the hold off on The Last Guardian.

We then moved onto the new Batman Arkham Origins game where Sony confirmed that the downloadable content will be exclusive to the PlayStation hardware (presuming the PS4 get the same treatment) during the launch window.

And then we finally moved onto the PlayStation 4. Andrew House hit the stage to go through the reveal of the console and to show off the black box (that ironically looks a lot like the Xbox One). It was the first time that Microsoft's decision to get the boring stuff out the way a few weeks back made sense and the next 30 minutes or so showed off the ideals of the console itself without really touching on any software. They explained the new PSN options as well as the way the console will easily fill everything your heart desires.

Sony finally started moving on to the games, with Shu Yoshida leading the way. The standard quotes stated coming out - 'the largest first party network in the world', ‘innovation’ was used in every other sentence. A nice touch was that there are 30 PS4 title in development across the world; 20 of which are due in the first year of the PS4’s life. It was interesting to hear that only 12 of these were confirmed as exclusives for the console.

Note - the bitter people online moaning that MGS5 is coming to Xbox One.

Then a new IP was announced from Santa Monica Studios, set in steampunk London, called The Order. It looked quite interesting with a team of four people, potentially confirming co-op, who had guns and were hunting some sort of monster infestation. No gameplay but the trailer gave a good impression that this was an FPS in the same vain as Dishonoured.

We were then treated to the new that Knack, Killzone and Driveclub would all be launch titles, while Infamous Second Son will be released in early 2014.

Next up was an announcement from Supergiant Games, who created Bastion. Their new game appears to be a sort of 3D top down action game with bright lights and pretty sprites. We also got a rundown of the other Indie games coming out before….

Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced to rapturous applause from the attendees - shame there wasn't more of it to see, but it looked nice and clean.

This was followed by another confirmation, and now gameplay showing, for Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag. It does look good and the jungle detail is immersive. The trailer showed new CG sections as well as a stealth hunt through the undergrowth – nothing new here then. The only thing to note is that the demo was suffering from extreme lag but this is apparently an ‘Alpha’ version on show so we should expect that I guess. I was still disappointed.

Sony were keen to confirm that PS4 owners would get a whole hour of exclusive content and a special outfit – I wonder how much that cost them!

We also got confirmation that the Elder Scrolls: Online would be making its way over to the PS4 although this is not an exclusive as the Bethesda panel already confirm an Xbox One release too.

Probably my favourite pieces of the conference came next with the joke announcement that ‘No Restrictions on PS4 Used Games’ and ‘No Online Authentication Required’. The crowd loved it so much that it was definitely the biggest cheer of the night and took a full minute and a half for the show to carry on.

Bless Tretter’s. You should watch the conference just to see how pleased he is with himself at his new role as the Santa Claus of video games.

We also got treated to the first gameplay of Bungie’s new franchise Destiny. It looked bloody gorgeous too with almost cell shaded visuals and gun names that Borderlands would die for (‘Thunderlord anyone?). The only shame was the terrible voice acting and online chatter.

Tretton then explained that the PS4 will be available this holiday season for $399 - or £349 to you and me.

The final piece I must leave you with is the distinct lack of Last Guardian news….. so.very.disappointed.