E3: Sony Remembers Past, Looks Far into Future
Not Pictured are the numerous bottles of water Tretton pounded during the presentation.
Instead of focusing on the future, the beginning of Sony’s
press conference was rooted squarely in the past. Sony President Jack Tretton
acknowledged the history of the site- the famed Shrine auditorium which was the
home of the Academy Awards throughout the Hollywood’s heydays. He then made a
subtle transition to Sony’s golden era- highlighting some of the best
Playstation One games, before moving on to the PS2. Soon, his trajectory became clear- Tretton was
attempting to overcome the common criticism of the PS3’s diminutive software
library.
Sackman throwing ‘gang signs’
Clearly the apex of Sony’s over-bloated press conference was
the company’s incorporation of Little Big Planet. Alex Evans of Media Molecule
created a level for the show that not only expertly displayed the upcoming title’s
flexibility, but also thumbed its nose at Microsoft. LBP character Sackboy expertly hopped his way
through charts and graphs, in a hilarious Mario Bros./PowerPoint mash-up.
Jim Lee: Savior of the Sony Show
After Evans left the stage, the show became incredibly
stale; Ted Price of Insomniac battled a boss from Resistance 2; sadly the fight
looked derivative. There was nothing to distinguish Resistance 2 from Killzone
2 or most other FPS, for that matter. Things moved rapidly downhill from there.
Sony showed the supposed ease of ordering movies for rent and purchase, which
put at least two nearby businessmen to sleep. One video montage later (another
would appear later in the show), attempted to create some energy. It took comic
book artist and game aficionado Jim Lee to briefly lift the tedium of the event
with a nerd-tastic Everquest rift.
Sony chose an odd game to close their show-the 256 player online
FPS MAG (Massive Action Game), currently developed by Zipper. After the
troubles Sony faced when they showed a ‘target video’ for Killzone 2; why would
they duplicate this dilemma with MAG? Clearly, the game will not be released in
2008, and we’d be surprised to see this ambitious title before the end of 2009.
Yeah, Jim Lee is the man!!!
too bad there wasn’t any in game footage of MAG….
LOL at the gang signs. For those that don’t follow basketball- Paul Pierce of the Celtics for fined for throwing up signs.
MAG=2010 at the earliest!
“sackboy” hahaha. That sound dirty, like teabagging.
Tretton looks like my dad. Not cool at all.
Would be funny in Price got pwned by his own game.
Only on this site would I read about a Mario/Powerpoint mash-up. And you know what, that’s a pretty damn good description of it.
Good review. I agree with most points, from watching it at home.
So little Big Planet is your game of the Show?
Thanks for all the E3 coverage.
Knocked two business men out? Didn’t you try to wake them up or anything?
PS1 days were the shit. Sony was king. Ah, so long ago!
How dare he pull the Celtics jersey out in LA.
And seriously, did they really need all those TVs up? Psh.
Woo, Jim Lee!
But all the TV’s had the Sony logo- Smooth, Sony…
Nintendo could have followed the past success route, I give them credit for avoiding it.
They couldn’t get anyone cooler that tretton?
THose water bottles were filled with vodka.
Sony has nerve. Did anyone boo?
Wow… Once you reach a level in “realistic graphics,” games do kind of become indistinguishable. That’s why I really prefer cartoony games, as art styles can very tremendously.
Love that LittleBigPlanet guy.
I watched this one streaming, and found it to be a bit long-winded. I did like the cute LBP level, as it made all those charts and graphs much more interesting and bearable to watch. I think LBP would be one of the few games right now that would persuade me to buy a PS3.
Great overview, men!
Jim Lee really saved the show. And Little Big Planet looks more than amazing.
I agree with this article. From watching the press conference on TV, Microsoft’s conference felt like a show while Sony’s conference seemed like a conference meeting.
Little Big Planet looks great though.
MAG will be crazy awesome if they can get it to work out smoothly.
Great write-up! This show was way too long!
I doubt MAG will ever see release in it’s current form.
Jim’s the man!
LBP is still all kinds of awesome.
Sorry sony, but you need to learn to accept that Microsoft has beaten you. Give up all your -3.3 billion dollars to them already. =D
doesn’t seem that sony is doing any better… big dreams but many unforfilled promises…
turns around and “hug my 360” 😀
nice 🙂
thanks for the coverage
If anything, Sony “won” the best way to show off graphs. The LittleBigPlanet chart demonstration was very entertaining.
No press meeting was a standout from all 3 that were held, but sony seemed to have the most solid and honest showing.
I think that they should have added Killzone 2 to the press briefing. That game looks sick and it would have really pleased many people to see it in the spot light.
It’s too late in the game for a slew of software. Sony screwed up.
I cannot wait for Resistance 2! Resistance was much better then Halo 3 I think, Resistance 2 should be amazing. Going to be cool to see Killzone 2 too, not to mention LBP and such…many good games this year even though many are old news.
Pretty disappointing conference. No really big announcements.
Dam Resistance 2 looks crazy, think ima go get that when it comes out.
Wow, Sony’s presentation sounds like it was pretty lame. I don’t have a PS3, but R2 and Killzone 2 look pretty sweet I must say.
Sony should crank out better games in the PS3 library in order to secure their market. Too bad they lost their exclusive rights on FFXIII.