Sony’s E3 2011 Briefing Round-Up

playstationMicrosoft’s E3 press conference came and went and it was quite the Kinect fest. With Nintendo making an apperance tomorrow, Sony was primed to steal the show on the first day of E3. Let’s break down their presser and see if they made Microsoft look like a bunch of chumps.

Details are after the jump!

  • Jack Tretton took the stage to apologize for the PlayStation network outage and made nice with the fans and distributors while simultaneously hacking down the games press for sensationalizing the story. Jack then brings out a couple of guys from Naughty Dog who show off the cargo ship level of Uncharted 3. The lighting looks amazing and the way the water filled up the hold is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
  • Right after Uncharted 3, Resistance 3 made it’s debut by flaunting a bit of their gameplay and the Move control integration. Sony also announced a bunch of 3DTV and Move bundles which feature Resistance 3 as part of the package.
  • The God of War and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus 3D/HD collections will be dropping in September.
  • 2K Sports brought out Kobe Bryant to demonstrate NBA 2K12 using the Move. Looks like basketball on rails, if you’re into that kind of thing.
  • A few back to back trailers for upcoming Sony titles like inFAMOUS 2, Sly Cooper 4 and StarHawk. Hands up who’s excited for Sly Cooper 4? That was definitely the best surprise of the show, even if it was just a trailer.
  • CCP, developers of the MMO EVE Online, takes the stage next to premier Dust 514, a first person shooter based in the same universe as EVE, even sharing the same servers. This is a really cool concept and it sort of brings to mind Planetside, which was also a Sony product. Closed Beta is in September with a full release next year.
  • BioShock Infinite made a big entrance with a trailer made entirely from in-game assets showing some story and combat related stuff. Irrational Games’ Ken Levine appeared after the trailer to talk about Sony Move controls on BioShock Infinity and to tease an upcoming BioShock related game on the NGP.
  • Sony then made a big deal about some exclusive PlayStation 3 stuff on titles like Saint’s Row: The Third, SSX and Battlefield 3, but didn’t actually show any of it (except for BF3, which just gets 2009’s downloadable 1943 on the disc). There’s also going to be a Star Trek game to coincide with the 2012 movie, which I guess Sony accidentally confirmed.
  • Kaz “RIIIIDGE RAAAACER” Hirai takes over for Jack Tretton at this point to officially reveal the real name for the NGP: The PlayStation Vita. The rest of the presser is dominated by this machine, with trailers for Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Ruin (a cool cross-platform top-down RPG), ModNation Racers, Little Big Planet Vita and Street Fighter X Tekken. Additionally, Kaz announced that AT&T will be the partner for Vita for Wi-Fi service which was greeting by laughs and boos. The PlayStation Vita will ship at the end of this year and will retail for $249 or $299 USD, depending on the flavor (Wi-Fi or 3G Wi-Fi).

So that was the majority of the Sony press conference: a lot of old stuff and a peek at the NGP. No God of War games, no Last Guardian and nothing from Square Enix. A pretty dry presser this year, but did it beat Microsoft? What did you guys think of the event? Did Sony bring it, or were they pretty “meh”? What did you think of Tretton’s apology?

Written by

mitch@gamersushi.com Twitter: @mi7ch Gamertag: Lubeius PSN ID: Lubeius SteamID: Mister_L Origin/EA:Lube182 Currently Playing: PUBG, Rainbow 6: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Total War: Warhammer 2

13 thoughts on “Sony’s E3 2011 Briefing Round-Up”

  1. I like the price of the Vita, I was surprised at the lack of Kevin Butler though.

    The Sly Cooper trailer really got me excited. Im a little nervous at the apparent lack of Sucker Punch’s involvement but Ill give Sanzaru(?) a chance.

  2. I think that Sony blew Microsoft out of the water, most of Microsofts games they showed were multiplatform or kinect games. Sony showed heaps of exclusives and also the PS Vita.

  3. Besides Bioshock and Uncharted, Sony’s conference was a bit of a bore. Vita is kinda cool but I don’t know. Disappointing, and I totally think Microsoft beat them this year.

  4. Uncharted 3 looks amazing, but that was expected going in. I was really impressed by the 3D tv that allows 2 players to see a different image on the same screen. I can’t imagine that thats easy to pull off. Price wasn’t too bad either really, although what we’ll get charged in Australia is another question.

    Medieval Moves looks pretty good too. Aiming quickly and accurately with the bow and arrow looks like it would take some getting used to. Does anyone know who’s developing it? Because it looks pretty similar to Sorcery that got shown last year, I was wondering if it was the same studio/company.

    Sony really is doing some amazing things in the industry. Putting steam on the PS3, and now connecting Dust 514 with Eve Online. As much as it pains the Nintendo fanboy in me to say, in the last year or so Sony really has been the one company that seems to be looking to the future and trying to get ahead of the curve.

    After watching the Microsoft and Sont press conferences, it looks like developers are starting to get used to their respective motion controllers and are making games that aren’t just mini game collections. Getting voice controls and such integrated with normal controls, this can only be a good thing. Thoughts?

  5. @Drell Assassin How come Microsoft “totally beat them this year”? Are you talking about all the multiplatform games that they showed? Minority report kinect or the voices commands in ME3?

  6. Yeah, I’m not really sure if Microsoft beat anyone, but it really comes down to the question of what’s worse: lame or boring? MS’s presser got kind of lame, and Sony’s got kind of boring pretty quickly. The thing that really disappointed me about Sony’s is that we almost literally saw nothing new for the PS3, which is a bit worrying for 2012, if you ask me.

  7. I feel many things were left unsaid at the Sony Press conference and all the good news were already known or very rumored so it didn’t really surprise people. Maybe they’ll announce some big games at the TGS later this year or so I hope. But in the meantime we have plenty to look for until the end of 2011 really. Many many good games for PS3. The tv bundle seems interesting and Vita is looking kinda cool by the way.

  8. @Eddy

    While neither is ideal, boring is much better than lame. Microsoft’s show made the 360 look more like a machine for 8 year olds than the Wii. (I want to state that I enjoy all my gaming machines, from Xbox 360 to Wii to PS3 and now even starting with a PC – I do have a preference for my PS3 at this point, though).

    That said, Sony’s breifing was much better, as far as I’m concerned. While it’s unfortunate that it’s paired with AT&T, the Vita is a cool machine with a nice round-up of games. Even though I don’t own a Move, it’s definitely something I’d consider buying at some point, and it seems much more usable than the freakin’ Kinect.

    Definitely disappointed, though, at the lack of FFXIII:Versus and Legend of the Guardian. They better be great!

    These two conferences definitely set up Nintendo to blow them out of the water (which I’m surprised at myself for saying), so let’s see if they can deliver. Project Cafe will take up a good portion of the show, I’m sure, but I hope the rest of it isn’t 3DS remakes of games we’ve already beat 10 times.

  9. Pretty good conference, but several dull sections. Some solid demos and so on but Eddy makes an excellent point: Nothing new. Although I was glad to hear about Dust 514 after what must be, what, 3/4 years? It could be an interesting exprriment.
    I’m sure there will be some stuff in 2012 but it is odd they didn’t show it at E3.

  10. I do feel that Sony didn’t bring anything new to the table other than the PS Vita (which does look pretty cool). The other announcements were pretty boring, other than Uncharted and Bioshock Infinite. I’ll give Sony a C, because it was boring. Microsoft’s press conference beat Sony’s because it wasn’t as boring, and they had some really cool things to show, but the kiddie Kinect stuff was pretty darn lame.

  11. [quote comment=”16721″]@Drell Assassin How come Microsoft “totally beat them this year”? Are you talking about all the multiplatform games that they showed? Minority report kinect or the voices commands in ME3?[/quote]
    It’s because Microsoft announced some stuff I’m actually excited about, such as the two halos and the new live functionalities. And they showed Mass Effect gameplay (which was surprisingly good with Kinect) so that always helps in my book lol.

Comments are closed.