PlayStation Move
The last of the Big Three platform makers to unveil their E3 wares ( Microsoft went first on Monday, Nintendo had its conference earlier in the day), Sony took the stage in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon and immediately launched into a lengthy 3-D demonstration of upcoming sci-fi shooter Killzone 3.
Given Sony also manufactures 3-D televisions, it came as no surprise that stereoscopic gaming was one of the event's main themes. Audiences learned that games ranging from Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Mortal Kombat to MotorStorm Apocalypse and Gran Turismo 5 would all be 3-D enabled. (On the subject of Polyphony Digital's long-delayed PlayStation 3-exclusive racer, it was finally given a release date: November 2nd.)
Another sizable chunk of time was dedicated to Sony's upcoming motion control interface, Move, which was tagged with a price. It will be available for $49.99 on September 19th, while it's sister peripheral, the navigation controller, will retail for $29.99. Sony also announced several games for Move, including titles developed explicitly for the new interface, such as the action game Sorcery, and releases that will offer Move control as an option, like Killzone 3.
Other news included details on Sony's new subscription service, PlayStation Plus (which was leaked last month), several deals for exclusive content for the PlayStation 3 editions of multiplatform games, and new footage and details on high profile games including LittleBigPlanet 2 and Infamous 2.
The show finished with the announcement of a new Twisted Metal game being developed by Eat Sleep Play, the studio founded by God of War creator David Jaffe.
I spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment Canada's Matt Levitan right after the conference ended.
So let's talk about Move. You announced both games and pricing.
Yeah. We spent a good 30 per cent of our conference on Move or Move titles, which I think showed the audience and gamers around the world that we're very dedicated to our launch in September this year.
I think the pricing surprised a lot of people. To have the Move controller be $49.99 and the navigation controller be $29.99; that's very aggressive pricing. And then of course we had the bundle as well, which includes the game Sports Champions as well as the PlayStation Eye [which is required for the Move interface]and the Move Controller for $99.99. So I think price-wise we're right in the ballpark. We're very affordable and it's a great value for what you get.
And I think that we showed a variety of content for our motion control device versus our competitors. That really distinguishes us. It's not just mini-games, it's not just sports. It's games like Sorcery, and it's games like The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest. And we announced Move compatibility with titles like SOCOM 4 and Killzone 3.
So that core gamer message is getting through as well. I think that's the one thing I'm going to stress most over the course of E3: Move really is for the whole family, and when I say whole family I'm remembering that the hardcore gamer is in the family, too. In fact, they're the ones that got us here.
One Move game highlighted during the conference was Sorcery, an action game designed specifically for Move control. Will that be the new interface's killer app? The game that sells Move, especially to core gamers?
I don't think it will be a launch game, but the one thing Sorcery does really well-as does The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, which I think we'll rely on more during the launch phase-is it lets the player control the character with the navigation controller while allowing a variety of other game [commands]with the Move controller.
That's the difference you'll find with a game using the Move controller as opposed to a game you might play with [Microsoft's competing motion control interface]Kinect. You can control your character's movements with the navigation controller. In my opinion if you're playing an action adventure game and you have to avoid other enemies on screen, it's really tough to do that with your body in addition to doing everything else you need to do.
It was mentioned that there was another bundle for $399 that includes the Move controller with the PlayStation 3.
Yes. That bundle is the PlayStation3, the Move controller, the Eye camera, and Sports Champions. That's a great offer. There's about a $50 savings in there.
Does it come with the navigation controller?
At this point we're selling the navigation controller separately because there are few games that feature it. If you want to play a game like Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, or later on down the road Sorcery, you'll want to pick it up. But because it's not in a wide variety of games out of the gate we left it out of the bundles so that we could keep the bundle under $100.
People will have to [check package information]to keep track of what's featured and required in a lot of these games. With a game like The Fight: Lights Out, you'll need two Move controllers-one for each hand-as we showed in the demo. And in a game like Sports Champions you might want to have four Move controllers if you're playing it in multiplayer.
Gamers are used to this sort of thing with peripherals. Depending on what you want to do you'll want to ramp up the number of peripherals in your house or just buy what you need. Having the navigation controller separate out of the gate allows the flexibility to add it when you need it.
Moving to 3-D, Sony called out a lot of stereoscopic content, including MotorStorm Apocalypse, Gran Turismo 5, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Killzone 3, Tron: Evolution, NBA 2K11, Mortal Kombat, and others. Can you talk about plans for the PlayStation 3's rollout of 3-D content?
We led off with 3-D today. We gave everybody 3-D glasses as they walked in and we showed a pretty killer 20-minute demonstration of Killzone 3 in true stereoscopic 3-D. It's pretty amazing to see the perception of depth and how it adds to immersion in the game.
I think people are going to have to see 3-D gameplay and how it makes sense in different genres. I mean, we just started getting people used to HD and now we're throwing 3-D in there as well. But once you see and experience something like Killzone 3 I think you'll get a sense of where this will go. [Sony Computer Entertainment CEO]Kaz Hirai said ten years from now we'll remember this year as ushering in 3-D. I truly believe we'll see it in some amazing racing games and action games. Even the sports franchises. I thought the MLB footage we showed was excellent.
And a good flexibility message we can share is that you can play all of these games in two dimensions or three. It doesn't matter if you have a 3-D TV or not. It's great if you do--you'll have a very satisfying experience--but if you don't you can certainly still enjoy Killzone 3 or Gran Turismo 5 or any of these games with 3-D capability.
I'm really impressed with what's been shown so far, but I know that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
You also talked a lot about PlayStation 3 exclusives, including Killzone 3, Gran Turismo 5, Twisted Metal, Infamous 2, and LittleBigPlanet 2. What can you tell us about some of these games?
There was a lot of pressure on us to top last year's show, which had Uncharted 2 and God of War 3. And we won last year's Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Game of the Year award with Uncharted 2, and the year before with LittleBigPlanet. Our development teams have done such an incredible job making our first-party software remarkable.
Out of all of the ones we showed today, from a technology standpoint I'm most impressed with LittleBigPlanet 2. The variety of ways you can make games now is above and beyond what we could do in LittleBigPlanet. If you want to make a top-down shooter you can do that, if you want to make puzzle games or fighting games you can do that, or arena-based combat stuff, you can do that. [Developer Media Molecule]has shown a toolset that allows you to make pretty much any kind of game you want.
From what I've heard from the development group you can expect that kind of diversity will also be in the single-player game. It's no longer just a platformer game, it's now a platform for games. That's fresh for people. There's nothing out there like that.
Another theme seemed to be exclusive content. Medal of Honor will have content exclusive to PlayStation 3, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood will have an exclusive single-player mission, the limited edition version of Dead Space 2 for PlayStation 3 will come with a revamped version of the Wii game Dead Space: Extraction that's been optimized for Move…
Some of it caught me by surprise, too. I certainly didn't know all of that going into today's conference.
I think it plays well to the fact that a double-sided PlayStation 3 Blu-ray disc holds 50 gigabytes of content. What that means is that you can max out a game like Dead Space 2 and still have enough space for a game like Dead Space: Extraction with Move capabilities. You can have an incredible game like Medal of Honor and still have enough space left over for an HD version of Medal of Honor: Frontline.
We're going to continue to push third-parties to work with us to make the PS3 version of games the superior version. If it means exclusive DLC, then that's what it will be. If it means a limited edition with content you can't get elsewhere, then that will be the play.
We'll always try to push gamers to buy the PS3 version. We're at a point in this lifecycle where many gamers have two or all three consoles, and we want to make sure that they're buying software for ours. And because we have 3-D, and we have Move, and we have the disc space, and the guaranteed hard drive, there's a lot of reasons why a person would want to buy a game for the PlayStation 3.
Let's move on to the PSP. It was mentioned that there will be 70 games released for the PSP between now and December, the biggest one being God of War: Ghost of Sparta.
Yeah, God of War: Ghost of Sparta is probably the biggest title. Today was the first time we showed extensive trailers and footage. It looks amazing. It's being developed by Ready at Dawn Studios, which did God of War: Chains of Olympus, which is still my own personal favourite handheld game.
But what we wanted to show--and I think we did this successfully--is that we're trying to branch out a bit with the PSP and bring it to a younger demographic with games like [the creature collection game] Invizimals, which speaks to a completely different audience than we've ever tried to go after with the PSP, more of a six- to 12-year-old demo.
I think games like that, plus Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, these younger skewing games, are going to be great additions to the PSP library. And with our $9.99 games and Greatest Hits collection it becomes a very affordable console for parents shopping for tweens and younger teens.
What can you tell us about the new PlayStation Plus service?
[Chuckles]That was the one rumour we had to dodge most leading up to the show. Everybody started talking about how we were going to start charging for our online service. And we knew we wouldn't be able to do that without a massive influx of gamers who would be very upset about how they've enjoyed something for free for four years and having Sony suddenly charge them for it.
What we've done is offer a two-tier system in which you can enjoy all of things you currently enjoy on PSN for free, or you can subscribe to Plus, which will be $50 per year. Plus gets you a wide variety of content, much of which you'd probably pay for throughout the year anyway, such as a lot of PSOne classics, a lot of demos, a lot of downloadable content, a lot of added DLC. So you're actually getting a lot of value for that $50 throughout the year.
Now that your messages are out there, are there any non-Sony specific products or services piquing your curiosity at E3 this year?
That's a good question. One thing that's piqued my interest is Virgin Gaming. I'm curious to see how that turns out. It will be interesting to see people play tournaments online from their homes against skilled people in a gaming environment for money and prizes. I'll be interested to see how that catches on.
From a product standpoint, there's nothing I'm more interested in than Final Fantasy IX. I'm a giant Final Fantasy fan. We got a taste of it in our conference-it's an exclusive-but I'm very much looking forward to getting back into that MMO world. Hopefully my wife and kids will allow me enough time to develop a character and level it up and enjoy myself in that world.
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