Archive for June 10th, 2013
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House closed out the Playstation 4 presentation with the following line:
Concepts like true consumer ownership and consumer trust are central to everything we do.
These words sum up how Sony cashed in on Microsoft’s ungainly fumbling as they tried to finesse various announcements about policies hostile to consumers. The words are a carefully crafted emollient that could only be made by listening to consumers, by being nimble enough to react, and by making specific and difficult decisions about whether Sony’s priorities are with consumers or with publishers. They chose consumers. By singling out the contributions of independent developers, by focusing on games over shoehorned transmedia and unnecessary proprietary interfaces, and most importantly by continuing the status quo on used games and DRM — two issues that go hand-in-hand — Sony has effectively won E3 before the doors of the show floor even opened.
The $100 cheaper price point is just gravy.
That’s the PS4 pictured above. Drink it in. Sony had their E3 presentation as today, closing out the E3 stage demo rodeo, and they finally unveiled the PS4 hardware.
Before they got to good stuff, Sony showed off the PS Vita and the PS3, just to remind everyone that both still existed and would continue to be supported into the near future. The PS Vita will get The Walking Dead with the upcoming 400 Days chapter, and the PS3 will get a scary digital Willem Dafoe in Beyond: Two Souls.
Because Sony didn’t have a pre-E3 event to talk about media streaming, they got to waste some time on that. Did you know Sony publishes music and movies? They do! The PS4 will have all sorts of ways to consume (and pay) for media.
Sony finally moved on to the PS4 by showing off the sexy hardware. PS4 games previewed included The Order: 1886, Killzone: Shadow Fall, Drive Club, Infamous: Second Son, Knack, The Dark Sorcerer, Assassin’s Creed 4, Watch Dogs, NBA 2K14, Mad Max, and Destiny. Square Enix showed a trailer for a game containing fops. We need more fop-based games. SE also teased Kingdom Hearts III. Dumbledore narrated a new Elder Scrolls Online trailer.
Indie games got a special shout-out. The Witness, Transistor, Don’t Starve, Mercenary Kings, Ocotodad, Secret Ponchos, Outlast, Oddworld Inhabitants, and Galak-Z were shown together to show off Sony’s commitment to the indie developers. This is an area that Microsoft has been criticized for in recent days.
Jack Tretton made sure to fire some shots at a competitor. The PS4 will support lending and resale of used disc-based games with no restrictions. The PS4 will not require periodic online checks either. I wonder who they were directing that towards? You’d think they had it in the bag, but then Jack slipped a quick change-up into his presentation. Multiplayer access on the PS4 will be locked behind PS+. Boo!
Just to rub it in Microsoft’s face, the PS4 is launching at $399. Someone’s been listening to gamers talk the past few weeks.
Ubisoft always has entertaining E3 shows. Not only do they normally have no shame about the presentations, they also seem to understand that normal people are actually watching. Jerry Cantrell opened up the festivities and jammed in a way that no player of Rocksmith 2014 will duplicate. Aisha Tyler then came on stage to host the show and wore a t-shirt with #girlwood printed on it, if that helps you paint a mental picture.
Games shown included the aforementioned Rocksmith 2014, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Rayman Legends, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Watch Dogs, Just Dance 2014, Rabbids Invasion, Assassin’s Creed 4, Trials Fusion, Trials Frontier (a mobile game) and The Division. Yves Guillemot stood next to Aisha Tyler to illustrate how wee he is compared to her. He also said that Ubisoft is excited for new consoles, I guess because of money. If I were in charge of Ubisoft, I’d be excited by all the money the next-gen consoles could mean for big budget publishers too. Rabbids Invasion is some kind of mad TV show and game crossover thing. One of the little guys snapped his own thong in the trailer which is all I needed to know. It ties into the whole Microsoft Xbox One television interactivity stuff which is probably all you needed to know. The Divison is about a global pandemic. Lot’s of next-gen doom & gloom in a RPG shooter. Tom was quite taken with The Crew and The Division.
Unsurprisingly, no one talked about Uplay.
We already knew about Ubisoft’s new Splinter Cell, the new Rayman, the next Rocksmith, whatever The Mighty Quest is supposed to be, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, more insufferable Rabbids, more Trials, and another Just Dance. What we didn’t know about were the standouts of today’s E3 presentation. Some former Test Drive Unlimited developers and Driver: San Francisco developers are working on The Crew, an ambitious open-world driving game set on a map of the United States that makes me wonder why anyone would bother with Forza 5 and Need for Speed: Rivals. As some cars rounded a bend overlooking Las Vegas, the guy presenting the demo said, “You could drive all the way down there and drag race the Strip.” That’s what I like to hear.
The Division, from Ubisoft’s Massive studio in Sweden, is an equally ambitious and enthusiastically presented MMO/shooter, laid out in a canned demo convincingly acted by a group of players who put to shame EA’s godawful commander mode gameplay session for Battlefield 4, in which 63 people rode boats to the top of a skyscraper while a 64th player identified himself as a commander as he poked at a tablet. In The Division demo, a group of players used various cool gadgets to liberate a besieged police station, showing off gameplay that would do any single player shooter proud. The Division claims it’s a massively multiplayer open world with some players on the ground while other players fly drones around. And sometimes PvP just breaks out. Then confetti fell from the ceiling. Ubisoft knows how to make a party out of a presentation.
EA had their E3 presentation today. Did you kow EA has a lot of big-budget action games? Games previewed included Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare – a third-person shooter and tower defense mashup – Titanfall, a quick tease for Star Wars: Battlefront, Need for Speed: Rivals, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Madden 25, FIFA 14, UFC, Battlefield 4, and Mirror’s Edge 2.
Aaron Paul showed up to preview the Need for Speed movie. It had lots of car crashes and loud music. It looked like a certain other movie francise with fast cars, stunts, and wacky plots. We’ll see if Need for Speed has the audience appeal to attract all those Death Race fans.
EA Sports Ignite was shown. It’s the new engine that powers all of the next-gen EA Sports games. True ballin’ yo! Drake came on stage to tell everyone that he does a lot of traveling and watching foreign sports. Apparently, he’s a big fan of FIFA and money. Bruce Buffer then jumped on stage to announce some names in his professional MC voice. I guess he also likes money.
We got to watch a bunch of players do their thing in a Battlefield 4 level with someone in Commander Mode. Apparently, that means someone gets to use a tablet to poke at a screen and yell at his team. A building collapsed in the now trademarked Frostbite way.
EA did not talk about Simcity.
Command & Conquer is redefining RTS gaming for the next generation, amplifying classic gameplay elements for a new era of PC gaming and introducing all new ways to play in the genre. Or so EA tells me in a press release. You’d never know from their press conference, which successfully kept the upcoming RTS a secret.
Microsoft’s E3 kickoff presentation aired live today and it was filled with hyperbole, buzzwords, and CG trailers. Presenters assured the audience that the games shown were only possible using the “unique Xbox One architecture” regardless of whether the product was multiplatform or not. Everything was anchored with the Power of the Cloud ™ which seemed to be the most popular phrase.
True to their word, there was no TV talk. Instead, everyone got a snootful of next-gen trailers. Games shown included a new Killer Instinct, Ryse, Quantum Break, Forza 5, Spark, Dead Rising 3, and Battlefield 4. Almost everything shown was tied to the cloud somehow, used Smartglass, Kinect, and had protaganists with grim and determined faces.
The obligatory E3 Halo trailer was shown. Master Chief had a snazzy torn cloak and I imagine his face looked grim and determined as he looked at something appropriately alien-looking.
Some gameplay from Respawn’s Xbox exclusive, Titanfall, was shown. It had mechs and parkour. And explosions, of course. Imagine Call of Duty with giant robots.
We did get one solid detail that we needed to know. Xbox One will launch for $499 in November.
My favorite part of Microsoft’s Xbox 1 presentation was game studio VP Phil Spencer coming out in a State of Decay T-shirt. He must be pretty happy about the sales of Undead Labs’ open-world zombie game (it’s second only to Minecraft for the numbers of copies sold in two days). And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer game. State of Decay is a fascinating contrast to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which has considerably greater production values, meticulously engineered and calculatingly effective emotional beats, and the same vivid characterization that made Uncharted so successful. But for all the raw manipulative power of The Last of Us, I can’t stop thinking about State of Decay while I play. Undead Labs knows well something too many larger studios forget as they chase their larger ideas: good game design will lead to good storytelling, but good storytelling in no way guarantees good game design.
Unfortunately, Spencer’s tastefully informal blazer covered the edges of the game’s name. Puzzled viewers must have wondered what Ate of Dec was. Furthermore, Spencer faithlessly changed into another T-shirt later in the presentation, shilling for something called Apy while showing off the new game from Superbrothers’ developer Capybara Games.
