E3 2011 – Sony Press Conference

We all know that Sony had a lot to make up for this year with the system hack causing outrage to millions around the globe, this major corporation really needed to impress to ensure that they maintain a strong fan base. A lot of people seemed to be questioning how Sony will tackle the issue of the hack in this year’s E3. Will they bring it up right at the start? Will they wait until the end and mention it? Will they ignore it altogether? What they ended up doing was most likely the best way to approach the situation, which was to get it out of the way right at the start. A formal and mature apology was made along with the guarantee that nothing of this sort will happen again. Once that was out of the way it was on with the show, and what a show it was!

Sony opened their show with a fantastic montage of music, game trailers and footage of the Playstation hardware itself. This was a fun and exciting way to start the show with the only problem being that much of the footage was in 3D, so really only those in the room could benefit from that. Of course this opening was very similar to last year’s Sony opening, but when you’re on to a good thing then why change it? Sony opened with only exclusive titles and continued to preview completely exclusive content for at least the first 50 minutes of the show, and then for much of the rest of the time as well. This type of emphasis on exclusives is what I have come to expect from E3 and Sony really didn’t disappoint.

The Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception demo was of very high standard which is of course what we have come to expect from Naughty Dog. The dynamic environment of the cruise ship in the demo was really breathtaking and only heightened my anticipation for the November release. Resistance 3 was next and looking good, followed by some information on the HD release of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, two games which I am personally greatly looking forward to playing on the PS3. Sony then started really pressing the ‘Move’ for the rest of the show. The NBA 2k12 demonstration was slow and felt awkward as the whole crowd waited for the celebrity sportsman to score a point using the move controller. Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest was up next which seemed to be for the younger gamers. The demonstration here wasn’t very impressive, the move functionality seemed a bit shaky and the gameplay itself looked quite slow and not very challenging.

In the same way that Microsoft was really pushing the kinect this year Sony had a real strong emphasis on 3D throughout this show. I have a feeling this is because the 3D capabilities of the PS3 haven’t really been popular so far with most people not owning or being able to afford a 3DTV. They tried to tackle this with an interesting 3DTV bundle which could be good but it still seems pretty expensive for a 24” TV. This was followed by several announcement of exclusive PS3 content for many big games such as Bioshock Infinite and Battlefield 3 which are great selling points for the console, especially with such big titles.

After all of this you could tell that the whole crowd was just building with anticipation for the new Sony NGP. They finally got around to this part of the show and unveiled the stunning new Sony Vita. This really was a highlight for me as the idea of being able to carry around real PS3-style graphics on a hand-held console is thrilling. Also with titles such as an all new Uncharted title, Little Big Planet, Mod Nation Racers and Street Fighter X Tekken it sounds like they are on to a sure fire winner. I also didn’t expect there to be so much connectivity between the PS3 and the Vita which was an exciting announcement.

Overall I was very impressed with Sony this year. The sheer amount of exclusive games and content was even more than I ever expected. My highlights were the new Uncharted 3 footage and demo as well as the Playstation Vita. They could have had less emphasis on the 3D aspect as I really don’t think many people are interested in 3D gaming yet, no matter how hard they push the idea. In the end it was a great conference that went out with style with the addition of a group of traditional drummers on stage to wrap things up.