We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.
The format for displaying their facts, figures and sales numbers was well played. Nobody wants to sit in front of a chart and listen to an executive blab on about what they did and where they’re going. But, when you add some Little Big Planet flair, such as having the graphs built within their game engine and Sack Boy hopping around on the statistics things smooth over well.
I was confused on why they chose to display the Little Big Planet graphic engine followed by Resistance 2 and then taper into talk about the PlayStation 2 with game previews. It seems more appropriate to bring in the PlayStation 2 product line first, then blow the crowd away with the current generation graphics. Instead, we were awed by the epic Resistance 2 graphics and then presented with old generation stale game engines… silly.
They went on to show off the wide array of PSP games arriving and a little trailer for Resistance Retribution for the PSP. The game system is definitely more mature than their DS competitor but seems to have a bit less sales momentum.
Overall, Sony did one right by talking about their three tiered solution to gaming instead of focusing too much on a single system. PlayStation 3 numbers are good but not mind boggling (like Wii) and their PSP product is doing much better than it used to and the PlayStation 2 numbers are high but falling compared to last year (as would be expected).
By focusing on the full suite of products they’ve put their eggs into many baskets rather than rely on their bleeding edge flagship product which still needs time to grow.
Well done Sony.
@Gamergate: Oh what a cluster-duck. Companies need to stay out of politics and people need to keep their personal lives out of the media and business world. Why are these people failing to learn these lessons? Not to mention the whole mob mentality of jumping on a bandwagon that they have no business getting involved in the first place. No wonder I’m an escapist. I had thought that the name Gamergate was a company until I read this story and not a continuation of the Watergate “meme”. I agree with Paul you shouldn’t add –gate to the end of every scandal. It makes it hard to differentiate from real things that have gate in it’s name like Brandenburg Gate or Golden Gate.
@Capcon: I know they are in the business to make money but I’ve always hated this mentality. The idea that if it doesn’t make 2 million it isn’t worth bothering with his a terrible thing, there have been games that did better over their life time then when they initially launched. Some games take time to build up their popularity and this need for them to be block buster sellers doesn’t guarantee quality. There are many AAA games that have sold millions and I have NO intention of ever buying or playing. This is the mentality that killed the original Sierra games and with them coming back I don’t want to go through all that again.
@Mario Clones: There was a similar joke in Sierra’s Leisure Suit Larry, where if your character died and you restarted they showed a cut scene of a new Larry being made and put back in place. So that’s an interesting game concept to imagine your characters going through.
@QotW: My favorite Saturday morning cartoon would have to be the Dungeons and Dragons. I loved Superfriends and Amazing Spider-man (who was teamed up with Iceman and Firesta). I had to use a site (http://www.inthe80s.com/saturdays.shtml and http://www.inthe90s.com/saturdays.shtml) to remember what cartoons were on Saturday morning as opposed to Weekday afternoon or morning. So I can’t seem to find when I watched Silverhawks, Thundercats or GI Joe, which I thought were in the morning. There are just so many to list but those that are very memoriable were Gummi Bears, Garfield, Kissyfur, and Smurfs. I have to agree with Jonah I do remember watching Smurfs mostly to get to whatever was after it and I didn’t stick to just one channel. It was a very warm and fuzzy nostalgic memory of a tradition that it is a shame has seemed to come to an end. I was like Jonah as well as after watching the cartoons I would be ready to go out and play.
The third Question of the week is that I play the Nintendo 3DS, I love all the RPG games and the old nostalgic games that I can play on it. I’m very into the Professor Layton games so that’s another one for Pawel.
GamersGate is the online store.
@EAs eternal struggle against its own credibility
When Battlefield 4 came out I was lucky enough to be at university and did not buy it at launch. I pre-ordered Battlefield 3 and spent the first day trying to get into a game, so I am glad I missed their second fiasco. DICE needs to stop rushing their games out the door. Especially considering that the Battlefield series have a terrible single player component which cannot compensate for lack of multiplayer (unlike Call of Duty).
@Thr Cute Terrors of Nintendo
According to the original Mario manual, Bowser turned all citizens of mushroom Kingdom into blocks. Basically, Mario rescues the princess as an accomplished mass murderer. In fact, Nintendo is full of creepy things which would make the Western audience cringe in fear. Dead Pokemon, Silent Hill-like Zelda dungeons and getting Zelda’s “Ultimate Reward” right in the dungeon she was kept in. Their early games are as good for kids as GTA.
@QOTW
The 3DS is still my favourite. I don’t play small iPhone games. I have KOTOR on the iPhone but it gets continuously interrupted by various notifications and calls, which makes me loose my progress.