GC: Sony Press Conference

PlayStation Slim has been confirmed, and Angus was there to get the details!

GamesCom – Tuesday 18th August 2009 (Day 1)

Andrew House, President and CEO of SCEE took to the stage as the E-Werk venue was packed to capacity last night here in Cologne, Germany. We were presented with a range of impressive statistics about Sony and although he was obviously blowing his own trumpet – he had cause to do so. Sony have managed to merge that market of gamers and those wanting an entertainment hub. House admitted that the reason the PS2 sold so well was that half the customers needed a cheap DVD player and gave it another use other than pure gaming. Sony haven't forgotten this with the PS3 (and to a lesser extent the PSP) and as you'll read later on, there are some annoucements that will help bridge that gap between a gaming console and a media device even more.

Sony have managed to move 138.8 million PS2 consoles since launch globally. And already have 23.7 million PS3s in house-holds around the world. House also went on to state the impact that the online aspects of the PS3 have made, claiming that there have been 7.5 million downloads of Home – the virtual environment hub allowing people to interact online. Sony also acknowledged that there is plenty of room for improvement regarding their PlayStation Network and online Store.

Regarding Home, there are new areas currently in the works including a SingStar space where players can partake in quizes about artists, listen to music or bust out their best dance moves on the nightclub floor. Your Home avatar will soon be able to carry around a camera to take any Kodak moments anytime online and users will soon have better customisation controls soon too. One of the stranger annoucements of the night was the inclusion of a “shrinking potion” coming soon to Home. Even House looked confused when he was talking about it.

Along with Home, the PSN Store is also getting a much needed make-over. We were promised improvements to the navigation and the ability to customise our interfaces to suit our preferences due this September. Another much welcomed feature will be the ability to purchase physical PSN Voucher cards at gaming outlets (just like Microsoft's Xbox Live does) to avoid excluding that non-credit card owner market. These vouchers were announced for only Europe however, but it makes sense that they will be world-wide soon.

Although it's hard to imagine with New Zealand's uber-pricey bandwidth, Sony are also bringing downloadable HD (and SD) movies that will be delivered straight to your PlayStation console. Already over 1 million PS3 owners have used VidZone, a Sony exclusive video delivery service that works via the PSN. Currently it's only available in France, England and Germany but this will be expanded to other areas through-out 2010. The video footage on-screen showed titles like Public Enemies, Transformers 2, Bruno, Terminator Salvation and plenty more. They also mentioned the ability to download local media content, possibly opening the doors to news broadcasts or regional television shows.

The additional online facilities have been extended onto the PSP too, with Sony show-casing the PSP Digital Reader. On launch, the Digital Reader will feature DigitalComics (with the help of Marvel) and will allow users to download comics straight to their PSPs. Obviously with Marvel being the instigator, the selection of comics are from their collection and include titles like Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Spiderman and others. DigitalComics is set to have over 100 comics available to purchase, with all of your transactions being tracked through the PSN Store. Once downloaded you can browse them via genre, have them displayed using an autoflow feature to avoid pressing any buttons when reading and bookmark pages for future use. Currently it's a niche market (although who doesn't love comics?) but the PSP Digital Reader software opens up the doors to all sorts of downloadable media such as e-books.

Still on the PSP, Sony have started to re-analyse what users want from their portable hand-helds. Obviously the upcoming PSP Go does away with the UMD discs and instead allows gamers to have a library of titles on the console at all times. However what a lot of users want from their handheld is the ability to pick up a game and play it for 5 minutes without having to get stuck into a full-on game. So this October, the PSN Store will include “Minis” – small, bite-sized quality games for the PSP. Along the same lines as what Apple do for the iPhone, Minis will be restricted to 100mb or less and offer them for an equally small price. They already have a handful of titles ready for launch including Tetris, Soduku and the highly entertaining FieldRunners game which is a top seller on the iTunes store already. As people get their hands on the PSP Go and start exploring titles online, it is a given that this catalogue of Minis will only get bigger and better. Importantly though, Sony aren't forgetting that the PSP is a solid gaming console either and are still delivering full A-Grade games including Assassin's Creed: Blood Lines, Tekken 6, Fifa '10, Soul Calibur and of course – Gran Turismo. In order to push the concept of downloadable games, Sony made mention of a free download of Gran Turismo to those who register their PSP Go console. It shows that Sony are truly embracing the shift from physical media to downloadable content by adapting their hardware.

Unfortunately not much could be said regarding Sony's motion control technology that they are bringing to the PS3. They did promise a proper annoucement at the up-coming Tokyo GameShow so we will have to wait for that. They still showed us a video of it's potential awesomeness to wet our appetites though including a first-person shooter type game where you need to explore areas with a torch-light. The end result looks more responsive than the Wii MotionPlus controllers and of course, in much better definition as well.

Now the biggest annoucement of the night was made by Kazuo Hirai – the CEO and President of SCEE himself. When he appeared on stage, you could hear the audience buzzing as Harai only ever appears when he has something big to talk about. After a couple of words, he started moving across to a podium on his right that up until now – had been completely ignored, and pulled out a small black box. In 2004 the PS2 Slim was released... and of course history repeats itself. This year, gamers can expect the PS3 Slim console to hit the market world-wide. It is a third of the size, lighter, has less power consumption and will boast a 120 GB hard-drive. It will also be cheaper – priced at $299 US ($442 NZ). As you would expect, consumers can also expect the price of the PS3 standard console to drop in price before the newer PS3 Slim comes out.

It will be release in NZ on September 3rd, 2009 for RRP $629.95.

More updates from Cologne tomorrow!

NZGamer.com would like thank Activision, Capcom, Microsoft NZ, SCENZ, SEGA, THQ and Ubisoft for making this trip possible.