E3 2004: Sony Conference: Full Report

Detailed report from this morning's Sony conference - PSP final design, details, dates and games revealed, PS3 mutterings begin.

As always, L.A. Center Studios was the scene for Sony's Pre-E3 PlayStation Media Briefing, in a pretty low capacity studio, boating the level of extreme security you'd expect at a presidential conference of some kind. They must have been really paranoid about people thieving a certain piece of new hardware.

The highlight of this year's conference was obviously PSP.

It's the piece of hardware we already know quite a lot about, and today we waited - and waited - to learn more about PSP, first suffering what had to be Kaz Hirai's lengthiest of traditional SCEA "stat and number sessions" in recent memory.

SCEA President and CEO Kaz Hirai
(apparently unphased by yesterday's soap opera).

The SCEA President and CEO started by remarking on the co-incidence of E3's tenth anniversary roughly aligning with Sony's time in the games marketplace, a fair observation and justly highlighting the incredible advances PlayStation has brought about in the industry in the last decade. But it's only just begun, according to Kaz. "Today we're here to tell you about how we plan to evolve our business through new dimensions with PlayStation... these dimensions will help to propel the industry in the right direction."

You want PSP? First, you must hear my stats.

The first announcement will be welcomed by all parts of the industry - a PS2 price cut to $149.99. "We believe that PlayStation 2 has the potential to reach new audiences that we haven't touched with the original PlayStation - and that's it's a positive message for the industry at large."

Kaz explained how the move opens up a significantly larger audience and revealed, "We're supporting our new price with heavy marketing initiatives that begin this week including on TV and national papers... we're really excited about the new price point and I'm sure that the market will respond in time. It illustrates our commitment to continuing the growth of PlayStation 2." The new price point is effective immediately.

Insomniac CEO Ted Price discusses R&C3

The seemingly never-ending stat attack included how PlayStation 2 has 41 different multi-million game unit sellers compared to only six on GameCube and just four on Xbox. Other highlights can be found in these assorted photos.

Things picked up pace as Kaz started to discuss what he described as Sony's big ticket releases: Gran Turismo 4 in November 2004, Killzone in November 2004, The Getaway Black Monday (previously The Getaway 2) in Winter 2004, Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3 this Winter, and God of War from SCEA in Q1 2005.

He also described this year as "the year of the platformer" pointing out that all three big action platform franchises - Jak 3, Ratchet and Clank 3 and Sly 2 - are returning this year. Finally, the announcement that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be exclusive to PlayStation 2 came as no surprise - but didn't they say that about Vice City?

Kaz played up the position of the "experiment" that is EyeToy, despite its underperformance in the US compared to Europe, and enthused about how thirdparties are taking on the device with software such as Sega SuperStars.

PSP: Not shown first on USA Today

Moving onto online, and Kaz managed to keep a straight face, despite Microsoft's absolute annihilation of Sony's online efforts and motives at its own conference last night. But today Kaz came back fighting, by showing a sequence of brand new titles that all boast online support, including Killzone, Burnout 3 and MGS3 - before welcoming onto the stage Insomniac CEO, Ted Price, to talk about the extensive online features in the forthcoming Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal.

Ted Price emphasised that this third game in the Ratchet and Clank franchise is effectively the first ever online 3D platform title. "This year we're showing off what we think is the next step in action platforming," Price revealed. After some gameplay clips, he dragged out some other Insomniac employees to engage in an eight player online battle.

He explained, "Ratchet and Clank 3 is really two games in one - it's a huge single player game as big as either of its predecessors, and a whole featured online game... we think it will expand the online market for PlayStation 2." Ratchet and Clank 3 offers Siege, Capture the Flag and Deathmatch style modes of online play, along with the bonus of co-op vehicles, destructible environments, and vitally, the ability to turn your friends into sheep.

Price offered that the game will take the action platform genre in an all new direction - and whilst it's though to argue with him, it could also be pointed out that the online modes of play offered in R&C3 are essentially no longer platform style experiences, but more like traditional firstperson shooter type experiences. Nevertheless, a potent demonstration.

Kaz went on to compare the games industry to music in terms of online. "This is not the music industry. In games, our core is based on the latest technology practises... innovation and direction will always come from within [the industry]."

Exciting PSP specs revealed.

Sony seemed more confident about its position with online in the gaming marketplace, emphasising that it has to be profitable. But this confidence was not backed up by any significant announcements of how the online proposition for PS2 might be better packaged to compete with Xbox Live which is clearly in front, aside from introducing new content of course.

Moving on to the next phase of the presentation, and the lighting of the entire studio became appropriately much whiter and brighter. PlayStation Portable, or PSP, looks pretty much the same as the original concept drawing from Ken Kutaragi last year, with some important modifications to the style of buttons and some tweaks to the visual appearance of the machine.

Kaz explained, "After building tremendous equity in the home console space, we began to look at the mobile market... We believe the timing now is right. The proliferation of mobile devices is at an all-time high."

He revealed that the primary market for the product will be 18-34 year old males, while teenagers are the secondary market. The final specification was revealed (see the relevant photo). Sony's competitors are keen to point out that all Sony's strategies revolve around buying "everything Sony" - but we say, so what? Does that mean they can't buy other stuff too? This product is slick and powerful, everyone wants one, and it's really as simple as that from where we're standing.

Sony isn't messing around when it comes to getting content onto this machine. Kaz promised original IP for PSP, extensions of existing franchises, interoperability with PlayStation 2 titles, and more importantly, wireless gaming and gaming extensions. All major publishers are on board, and the video presentation of titles coming to PSP kicked off with Death Jr. and went on to include Ape Escape, Wipeout, Ridge Racer, and best of all, an extremely respectable looking version of GT4 entitled Gran Turismo 4 Mobile.

Dom Mattrick from Electronic Arts, fresh from yesterday's Xbox Live announcement, got back into Sony's good books as he came onto the stage to reveal that EA will support PSP as heavily as it always supports PS2. The line-up of titles includes EA big hitters such as Need for Speed Underground, Tiger Wood's PGA Tour and NBA Street.

To demonstrate the fact that PSP will play movies and music, Kaz went on to show the trailer for Sony's forthcoming Spider-Man 2 movie, followed by a music video that couldn't end quickly enough frankly. The videos played direct from PSP, as proved by an ironic 'dual screen' set up as pictured. Admittedly, we haven't got any better ideas for how to demonstrate this functionality, and it could have been a worse trailer than Spider-Man 2 after all.

Proof that PSP plays movies and stuff.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a feature length movie coming to UMD Video, the name given to the video version of the PSP storage format, and the trailer for this Square Enix project looked typically impressive, as you can see in our hi-tech screen grabs. I haven't the foggiest what it's actually all about though, but nevermind, I am sure there are other Kikizo staff who can explain at some stage.

Release dates? Japan - calendar end 2004. North America and Europe / PAL - fiscal end Q1 2005. And a roll out in Korea will take place mid 2005, before being cracked by pirates in a matter of hours.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

The final, remarkably indistinct section of the Sony conference was effectively a PR response to Microsoft's recent XNA hype. Kaz introduced Masa Chatani, SCEI's Chief Technology Officer. Chatani jumped straight in to discuss the March 2001 joint announcement between IBM, Sony and Toshiba of the "Cell Processor" and reveal that basically, Cell is still alive and well, extremely powerful, and integral to a "Cell Processor Based Workstation" coming Q4 2004.

As far as we could make out, the purpose of this segment was to start discussing the next generation home console as quietly as possible, without actually mentioning "PlayStation 3". After all, why go to the hassle of planting PS3 information in front of the global media in Los Angeles, when you've got Sony Europe publicly spurting all sorts of internal information about PS3 left, right and center?

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com