Wed, 08 Jun 2011 1:03p.m.
The Sony press conference was held at the LA Sports Arena, home to the Lakers until 1967. I learnt that fancy bit of trivia on the bus from a nerd.
Inside, it looked nothing like a basketball court and more like a stage set up for a gig. More on that later.
Things kicked off with a look at Uncharted 3. This thing has turned into a successful franchise, and you can see why – it’s the perfect action/adventure movie for crying out loud! That was just a figure of speech, but come to think of it, it's actually going to become an action movie.
Anyway... Uncharted 3 looks amazing, and seeing as hundreds of us were handed real3D glasses upon entry we even got to see a few cutscenes in 3D. I'm still not sold on 3D, but by God did it look good.
While we're on the topic of 3D, I should get straight to it and say Playstation announced their own 3D TV. It's affordable for dorm rooms as well as fancy lounges, they say, which sounds good to me it's a 24" and looks pretty sexy. It's the first time I've seen a 3D TV and thought "maybe".
The other bit of hardware released was the NGP, Sony's Next Generation Portable. The not-so-secret name was revealed, Vita. Like Vista, but without the S. It's a sexy looking unit and I had a bash later in the night. And I'm happy.
The Sony PlayStation Vita
Two cameras for fun augmented-reality stuff, and they had a demo of Uncharted Golden Abyss running on it which looked bloody great. I'm a graphics man, primarily, and they looked fantastic. Touch screen, wifi, 3G, all that guff, I loved that too. It's a great unit and I look forward to playing more on this thing.
What else stood out to me? Well, Kobe Bryant turned up to play an upcoming NBA game for Move.
Kobe Bryant at the Sony E3 2011 event (Reuters)
He's not as tall as I would have thought, and he's terrible at the game. But he has a good laugh and is a total natural on the stage. Many would have gone into awkward mode as a famous sports star (one of the most famous) who can't play said sport in a game.
More games and demoes... new LittleBigPlanet, and a charming man from Iceland announced a new shooter called Dust 514. The trailer looked pretty sexy and flash, but the cool thing is for the first time EVER for a console game, it looks into a PC MMO called Eve. Sure heaps of you know Eve Online, and will be stoked. Duality. Interesting concept.
The biggest cheer went up when a charming Japanese man introduced everyone to Street Fighter x Tekken. Even I clapped, and I'm not a clapper.
And yes.. I should mention that Sony did address "the elephant in the room", the PSN outage. They say they’re back to 90% online which is nice. They thanked the fans, the retailers... and had a good little dig at the media saying they’re glad we got a good story, basically. On a sidenote I took the lift with a support person from Sony who said it had been a tough few weeks, but "it happened to Nintendo today!" with a little sparkle in her eye. I sort of felt good for her. She seemed a kind soul.
The night finished with a gig by LA locals Janes Addiction. I was in heaven, as were a core bunch of fans. Others preferred to keep playing in the Vita.
"I've played worse gigs than this!" said frontman Perry with a smile. "I've played in prison!"
It turns out he's one of the funniest, most light-hearted frontmen in rock.
"I want my kids to be exposed to games! I want them to be desensitised! I want them prepared when they're in a dark alleyway with an uzi!"
He had me laughing and rocking at the same time. Yes, there were scantily glad girls. Yes, Nevarro took his top off.
FOOTNOTE: Special mention to the drunk 70-year-old man next to me. He was the most hilarious man I've ever sat next to in a press conference. He had his laptop out looking at scantily clad women for most of it. When he did take notice of the show, he'd say a keyword prefaced with "wow", like "WOW, 3D!" or "WOW, SPACE GAME!"
He had me and several others in stitches.
The day before the Sony event, I attended Microsoft’s. Team Bill Gates made me get up at 7.30am on a Monday to get registered and into their conference so I was a bit sleepy... but coped.
It was held at the Galen Centre, which I'd liken for NZ folk to Vector Arena. Sexy stage setup, even the stairs had green XBox lines leading the way up.
Things kick off with a wonderful look at Modern Warfare 3. It's an underwater mission that sees you blow up a sub and then go inside before blowing more shit up, getting into a speed boat, firing at massive ships and then being choppered out whilst flying through explosions and a city under attack. This is next level craziness here... it's MAD. It's out of control, and hearing it over giant speakers that rumble your body and a giant screen... lordy. It's quite something. I know some people are getting sick of the MW campaigns, but heck, they're just so cinematically awesome. There was almost a disaster when the controller disconnected on stage, but it found its way back again and that was the only XBox presser disaster.
Other gaming highlights: Hmmmm. Tomb Raider stands out, because we haven't seen Lara Croft for awhile. She grunts far too much when in pain. I did an experiment and closed my eyes... totally different vibe. You know what I mean.
The new-look Lara Croft
The new Fable looks fun, and there's a trailer for Ghost Recon Future Soldier which is pretty much mindblowing. It's going to be Kinect capable, and a chap on stage did a very impressive demo where he configured a customisable gun (millions of gun combos are possible... very cool) by moving his hands, or speaking. It made the nerds in the room VERY happy.
They made a big hoo ha about XBox partnering with YouTube and Bing too. I didn't find it that exciting.
What I did find a bit more exciting was Kinect Labs launching. I don't really dig this body moving stuff, but this is basically a place where cool ideas are developed much like the fan videos of Kinect/Wii hacks you see on YouTube. Basically a bunch of apps that let you do fun things. You can take a photo of yourself which is treated like a 3D object so you can draw crazy stuff in front and behind your photos and there is a cool feature that photographs any object then turns it into a pretty similar digital object. There are some fun things there if you've got a Kinect unit, put it that way. It's more fun to watch than read about.
Best Celeb Endorsement: Cliffy B demoed Gears 3 with his "friend" (his word) Ice T. That was pretty amazing and hilarious at the same time. Sony got Kobe Bryant. XBox got Ice T. Both good for different reasons.
Oh yeah - it all ended with a fancy movie for Halo 4. XBox fanboys got excited. There was a buzz in the air.
So… unlike last year no new big hardware announce for Microsoft. They just a push for more Kinect stuff, and some rad looking games. New dashboard on the way, too. Generally a good vibe in the air at 11am when it wrapped up.