The Sony PS3 Conference Unveiled

Kaz Hirai, the President and CEO of SCEA, hit the stage and we all were thinking one thing- Playstation 3. PS3. The Play-Station-Freaking-Three. Having seen a good handful of screenshots proceeding E3, everyone had one thing on their mind- getting their hands on a PS3, or at least seeing what one could do. Not one year ago had we seen screenshots, but since they were FMVs, Sony had something to prove- that all that talk regarding the Cell processor was more than just inflation and bull- and that this November, we would actually be playing those games on our TV sets.

First off, Hirai made it blatantly clear, as he said, that the PS3 was not an “Incremental Upgrade”, but rather a completely new rendition. With the PS2 hitting the milestone of 100 million sales, the existing market is large and powerful, the PS3 has a lot to live for, considering that the kind of quality and power from the PS2 is not only expected to be matched, but be even better than before. That's like telling an Olympic marathon runner he has to do the same run in half the time- one hell of an expectation from the market.

Lovely Numbers

The first part of the Sony press conference was lovely numbers, which tend to attract people interested in the business of games (Generally being myself), but leading everyone else to wait to see more. Obviously, it's nice to see that 103 million PS2s have been sold globally (Which means that, chances are, you have a PS2, or know at least two people who have one). The real surprise here is that he expects over 10 million sales for the next quarter- and that's before the PS3 launches. Wow.

Also, of interest is the fact that Sony has sold over 1.047 BILLION games. That's billion. Not million. That, my friends, is called “One whole hell of a lot”, and again proves that Sony has a lot to live for with the Playstation 3. This whole start of the press conference made me think that Sony wanted to purposely remind journalists such as Gametrash that “Please give us lenience, we have a lot to work on”. Well, maybe. On a side note, apparently the PS2 online system has three million users. Wow.

PS2 Game List

Also note that he stopped to gloss over some PS2 games, but who really cares? Honestly, it seems somewhat stupid, but Hirai seemed to want to delay the info on the PS3. This irritated me, because I was shaking I was so excited. In any case, here's the list:
ATV Offroad Fury 4
Destroy all Humans 2
Dirge of Cerebrus
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkachi Z
Final Fantasy XII
God of War 2
Guitar Hero 2
Justice League
Madden NFL 07
MLB 06 The Show
Mortal Kombat Armageddon
NBA 07
Okami
Rogue Galaxy
SingStar
SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Combined Assault
Urban Chaos
Yakuza
Totalling over 216 PS2 titles before the PS3 launch.

The PSP

Also, Hirai decided to torture us with discussion of the PSP, because apparently he eats his desserts last and forces us to do the same. The PSP, as I have mentioned in many articles, is basically a dying system due to strong competition in the Nintendo market, though it has been doing well this quarter thanks to powerful Asian backing. One of the main problems with the PSP is the fact that is has been underdeveloped for, but Hirai cleared that up, alluding that the PSP will be backed up more as the PS3 is released, and that they have “Waited” for the opportune time to power the system adequately. He also managed to show that the system was doing rather well, citing that it is, quote “The fastest selling platform in our company's history”, and showed that a remarkable 17.03 million units have been sold since release. While that still is dwarfed by the amount sold by Nintendo's DS, it still is impressive, and shows the system has some life in it.

Some games I saw at the press conference:
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
World Tour Soccer 2
B-Boy
Planet PSP
Apce Academy 2
Loco Roco
Gangs of London
Killzone: Liberation
TalkMan

I have to say from an impartial perspective that the most interesting title here was Planet PSP. Touted as some sort of map system, it apparently gives you directions and information on where you want to go. Also featured was TalkMan, which appears to be like the already released Japanese game where you speak to the system and it translates for you. Another interesting thing is that “Greatest Hits” games will be launched on the PSP, requiring 250,000 sales (and be on the market for at least 9 months) to gain the title. That's not to say that the myriad list of other titles was not as fascinating, and I am quite happy to say that PSP owners will be pleasantly surprised this year.

The Playstation 3

Now time to talk about what you REALLY want information on- the Playstation 3. Of course, as Hirai talked, my eyes were only one place (And not on his annoying pink shirt)- the shiny black Playstation 3 behind him. First off, some specs as officially announced:

Powered by Cell
CD, DVD, and Blue Ray Disc Format
Bluetooth, WIFI, and Ethernet Internet capabilities
Dolby Digital Surround Sound
Legacy SD to Full HD support (1080p)
Wireless controllers for up to 7 players
Pre-installed Hard Drive Discussion
USB, Memory Stick, SD, Compact Flash

One happy thing that Hirai made clear was the fact that all older Playstation games will play on an emulator on the PS3. This is slightly different than the PS2 (As the PS2 actually had PS1 parts inside of it to not have to emulate the PS1), but the PS3 is so strong it can literally emulate the PS1 and PS2 games without any kind of overhead worry. That's impressive from the standpoint of someone who has emulated a PS2 game before, but regardless, a moot point once we get to the big time PS3 games. And, one of the coolest features is interoperability with the PSP, which can be done via USB, a network, or even the memory sticks used in the PSP.

Kaz Hirai made sure to remind us that the PS3 is designed around designers. Interestingly enough, this is just around the time certain developers (Who will not be named) started blasting Sony on G4TV because of their processor load out. While some developers were nice and said that they needed to get used to it, others seemed to be a little picky.

Then it came to a direct slap across Microsoft's face, Sony style. Showing a large table of statistics, Hirai rubbed in the fact that the Blu-Ray DVDs used in the PS3 will be insanely huge and feature up to 50 gigabytes of storage. That depresses me slightly, being bigger than my Laptop's hard drive, but it means that we'll be seeing a lot of uncompressed movies/music in these games. As a comparison, by the way, default XBOX 360 games are 9 megs. One of the coolest facts that Hirai announced was the evidence for this need of high storage capacity- the fact that at launch, around 75% of all PS2 games were still on CD format, instead of DVD. Five years later, 95% of PS2 games are DVD- meaning developers are slowly but surely needing more space- “We are sending a message to the content creation community that the only limitation they have now is their imagination”.

More statistics, because Sony loves numbers. According to more displays, 34% of the Playstation Underground (A group of random gamers Sony uses for demographics, I'm part of them) have HDTV compatible televisions, 83% of HDTV owners aren't satisfied with the stuff they have now in HDTV- and finally, 25% of United States Households will have HDTV by the end of 2006. Basically, all this means that HDTV is a big standard, and obviously any new console needs it.

The PS3 will be all about caching, downloading, and small purchases. Once the system launches in 2006, part of the market of the PS3 will be hooking it into a network and not only downloading game content, but also using the included HDDs for caching and storing information. Anyone owning a XBOX knows the benefit of this- faster load times, better speed, overall quality boost. As I mentioned before in a recent news article, the two systems of PSP which will be shipped will feature 20gig and 60 gig hard drives, respectively- plenty for all the caching developers would ever need.

Now for some development information. Playstation 3 development kits- the actual stuff that game developers work on- have been shipped out already. Not only have they shipped out over 10,000 to 208 countries (The largest number of development kits ever shipped), but the final launch kits are already shipping, and the final product was there, in front of my eyes, at E3. You have no idea how much I want to go and steal one.

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