Sony's E3 Press Conference [E3 2004]

Price cuts, PSP plans and details, Cell technology, and online renovations headlined the show at Sony?s annual E3 press conference.

Despite the swirl of rumors and the bustle of fanboy fantasies, no next-gen platforms like the PS3 or the Xbox 2 materialized at the annual wave of E3 press conferences, but Sony kicked off its announcements with the kind of practical news that will gladden gamers? hearts: The price of the PS2 has dropped $50 to $149. Strangely, that applies for either a standalone PS2 or a bundle that includes a Network Adaptor and a copy of ATV Off-Road Fury 2, so shop wisely. Since 90% of PlayStations were sold after its price dropped to $149, Sony expects this to be the magic number that will make the PS2 a mass-market powerhouse. Defying expectations, the year?s biggest title was MIA -- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas made only a whisper of an appearance as its title flashed briefly on a screen, but no gameplay footage was shown -- and no celebrities showed up to stump for Sony.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America President and CEO Kaz Hirai, as usual, brought impressive numbers to the event, claiming 170 million PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PS one consoles had shipped worldwide, with combined PlayStation/PlayStation 2 software shipments topping 2.5 billion. He noted that sony had done the impossible, "leading in two consecutive hardware generations" and focused the first part of his presentation on Sony's commitment to "long sustainable lifecycles" -- possibly as a way to establish that the PS2 is here to stay.

Sony's own figures say that 29.5 million PS2s have been shipped in North America, with 71.3 million shipping worldwide. By contrast, Sony says that Microsoft has shipped 8.6 million Xboxes in the U.S. (13.7 million globally) and Nintendo has shipped 7.4 GameCubes domestically (13.9 worldwide). The PS2's rapid growth (20% of North American households now have one, after just 42 months on sale) even shows up the original PlayStation's numbers, which are 28% in 104 months. "The health of our business rests on our shoulders," said Hirai, just before announcing the $149 price reduction.

He added that there are already 41 million-selling titles on PS2 (compared to 6 on GameCube and 4 on Xbox), and that Sony's big titles for 2004 include The Getaway: Black Monday, Gran Turismo 4, KillZone, Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Jak 3, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, and the exclusive-to-PS2 GTA: San Andreas.

Hirai touched briefly on the EyeToy, citing 3.8 million shipped in 10 months worldwide. New applications are on the way, including video messaging, something called "AntiGrav" which was not explained (other than being in the "next generation" column of the presentation's digital slides), and the note that the next DDR from Konami will use the EyeToy.

Sony touched a bit on its plans for online gaming, which it?s revising and restructuring. "2004 is a growth year for online gaming on PS2," said Hirai, claiming that 100,000 new online users arrive on PS2 every month, and that over 100 PS2 games will be online-enabled by the end of the year. Among the titles shown in brief video segments: Area-51, Mortal Kombat: Deception, Gran Turismo 4, SOCOM II, MLB 2005, KillZone, Hot Shots Golf: Fore, Star Wars Battlefront, Burnout 3, Splinter Cell, Madden 2005, Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain, Final Fantasy XI, ATV Offroad Fury 3, Monster Hunter, and Metal Gear Solid 3. Insomniac CEO and president Ted Price came out on stage to demonstrate an eight-player game of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal live on stage, saying the game would be the first online action/platformer for PS2, yet still feature the deep and lengthy single-player experience fans expect from the franchise. The game's attitude won't change -- "Where's the humor in online games?" he asked. "Where are the farm animals?" Arsenal will feature voice chat, three types of online gameplay, split-screen play for those without Internet access, destructable vehicles, and the ability to turn your opponents into sheep.

For its new online plans, Sony claims it won?t interfere with online PS2 titles, allowing developers to keep control and keep their intellectual property (a jab at Microsoft's heavy involvement with Live-enabled titles). "The content creator controls its own destiny," said Hirai. But Sony does plan to build an infrastructure around a standard protocol that developers can use and plug into their games, help developers with billing, and offer mini-transactions that mimic the iTunes model -- gamers will be able to purchase downloadable content, user-created content (GT4 experts could sell souped-up cars to newbies), episodic content, access to persistent worlds, and other entertainment content. No launch details or specifics were given for this new PS2 online model, but it is under development. To help with the storage of this content, Sony will also be releasing a larger-format memory card -- again, no details there either. Hirai sums it up: "We must evolve the experience of online gaming. Non-revenue-generating online gameplay is the norm, but not for long."

But as expected, the PSP was the focus of the spotlight?s glare, though Sony also touched vaguely on some changes to online play and on its PS3 plans by outlining a broad picture for how Cell technology, the underpinnings of the PS3, will work -- and it?s downright cool. First the PSP news: No price points were announced, but Sony?s entry into the portable gaming market will be launched first in Japan in late December. It will follow in the U.S. and Europe in March 2005, and lastly in Korea in summer 2005. Disappointingly, no live PSP gameplay was uncorked, though trailer footage of Need For Speed Underground, Death Jr., Wipeout, ATV Offroad Fury, Metal Gear Solid, Spider-Man, Ape Escape, Hot Shots Golf, Twisted Metal, MediEvil, Ridge Racer, Tony Hawk, Dynasty Warriors, and Darkstalkers was shown.

The video abilities of the PSP were touted by showing the device running the Spider-Man 2 movie trailer and an Incubus video, prompting Sony president Kaz Hirai to label the UMD, the PSP?s proprietary disc storage, "the new global format." UMDs, which are small discs enclosed in a plastic case, will hold three CDs worth of content (roughly half of a DVD), and Sony has paid special attention to regional encoding and copy protection, which has interested movie and music publishers in the format. UMDs may be used by record labels to release full-length albums, video compilations, concert footage, and more. Also, Sony announced that Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the 70-minute animated sequel to FFVII, will appear both on DVD and UMD. While not shown running on an actual PSP, Sony did show a brief trailer of footage from the movie.

EA honcho Don Mattrick was on hand to represent for the world?s leading third-party publisher, promising four launch titles for the PSP: NBA Street, NFL Street, Need for Speed Underground, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, but he didn?t reveal whether they were ports of previous PS2 versions of those games or entirely new editions. Mattrick showed footage from these games via a PC emulator and not on an actual PSP.

Sony also focused heavily on the technical details of the PSP, many of which were identical to the ones presented last year. The screen is a 4.3 inch TFT LCD screen measuring 480 pixels by 272 pixels. The memory has been upped to 32 MB with 4 MB of embedded DRAM, and the system comes with both headphone and microphone jacks. Most interesting was the wireless support, which will use the 802.11b format to allow wireless communication and gameplay between PCs, PS2s, and other PSPs. Since Sony hasn?t announced a wireless PS2 add-on, you can safely bet one is in the works. Other highlights include the planned accessories, which will range from GPS to a keypad add-on to a USB camera -- perhaps a PSP version of the EyeToy. The lithium-ion battery will last anywhere from 2.5 hours to 10 hours, depending on how you use it -- kind of a broad range. As expected, Sony promised interoperability between the PSP and PS2, meaning users will be able to share game data between the two devices in some unspecified way. The prototype shown at the conference was very similar to the photo that Sony released a few months ago, though it was black, not silver. Oddly, it looks a lot like Atari?s old handheld unit, the Lynx.

Hirai also discussed the PSP business model, saying that the low development costs for PSP games means that developers are in a "sweet spot" where they can create PS2-style games without a full PS2 financial investment. So far, Sony has enlisted PSP support from 34 Japanese developers, 24 US developers, 31 European developers, and 10 South Korean developers -- which is pretty much the entire video game industry. "We believe the timing is now right," Hirai proclaimed. "The PSP is as revolutionary as the PlayStataion was, but in different ways."

In a peek into the future, Sony also laid out in more details its plan for Cell technology, which will form the backbone of the PS3. The company?s goal is to make a common development environment for movies and games. Movie studios could then use it to create assets like special effects or rendered scenes for films, then those exact same assets could be used by game developers -- the goal is to make games look as good as movies. The Cell technology, developed by Sony and IBM, features vast floating point capabilities, which are at the heart of game elements as diverse as rendering, physics, facial expressions, and 3D sound. Since this technology will rank at the supercomputer level, Sony plans to make plenty of middleware and other tools, and it?s aiming to release a prototype to developers by fourth quarter 2004. All in all, details were vague beyond this broad outline. But Sony also added that once Cell technology is out, gaming consoles and workstations can create a network via broadband, a "Cyber World" that people can "jack into" via their consoles. Masa Chatani, the chief technology officer for SCEI, called it "the future of broadband entertainment."

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