A planet you are going to want
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 12:40PM Today was the day that the conference really got going. The exhibition was open and we had the first keynote presentation.
Crowd pleasing football
Before the presentation we played a kind of football, bouncing a large ball into goals each side of the auditorium. Our side lost. Then it was on with the show. This one was from Sony, who make the awesomely powerful (so they keep telling us) PS3. Very little that I've seen of the PS3 has convinced me of this power.
With the exception of MotorStorm and some tech demos there has been little that has impressed me about this machine so far. Namco should be singled out for an especially big kicking at this point, their PS3 versions of Tekken and Ridge Racer are a textbook exercise in lazy launch coding. I can understand the pressures that they must be under, but I still can't see an excuse for serving up poor rehashes of previously great games. Anyhoo, I digress.
Fortunately today the talk was not pixel pushing power, but community. Things kicked off with a description of the Home service. This is not an old BBC radio channel, but a virtual world of take on your personal space on the PS3.
Coming to a life near you
You can wander through an advertising adorned 3D environment, select and position furniture and Sony products around the place and generally make your pretend existence and appearance better than the one you have at home. There is a community area too where you can play pool better than in real life, and a place to put the trophies from all the games you've bought.
There was no evidence of a world between these virtual spaces, so whether you can walk across rolling hills and ford babbling brooks to get to your friends pad for a spot of low quality Tekken remains to be seen, but if Sony get their act together on this one I can see property values in Second Life taking a bit of a downturn.
A virtual world worth visiting
At the end of the talk was the best bit. The game "Little Big Planet" takes social gameplay, realtime physics and the rendering power of the PS3 and creates a really fun place to be where you can build and modify the game environment as you play the game. This did look good, and had a Nintendo like appeal, in that I could actually see a game that was using the technology to make new kinds of gameplay experience.
At the end of the presentation I must admit that I'm now quite happy to be getting a PS3, something that I wasn't too sure of when I went in...
Reader Comments (8)
And home looks to be doing something which nintendo forget to do give their avatars some purpose.
Overall I'll probably get a ps3 at xmas.
Sony hate their customers, its a fact - I guarantee after 6 months of living at 'Home' they'll probably have some dude come and reposess all your stuff in order to pay for your virtual world!
:D
If it was a proper full game it'd be somewhat more of an issue.
I went by there again today and they had MotorStorm running, which makes a lot more sense.
Also the Nintendo Wii is an entirely different market, the only comeptition to PS3 in it's sector is XBox 360 and, thus far, PS3 has yet to show anytghing other than a marginal improvement on SOME games - others (like MBL 2007) are significantly worse. All I'm saying is that right now the PS3 isn't worth what they are asjking for it and can't actually do what they say it can. Give it a year and maybe 'll be proved wrong but I think Sony's general attitude of 'It doesn't matter what we produce, or what we charge, people will buy it' is goign to affect them in the long run.
remember that originally there was going to be no online content at all for the PS3, they did a U-Turn about 12-18 months ago when they saw how awesome XBox Live social networking is. There was originally no motion senssing in the original controller design but they ripped out the rumble packs and put some giros in when they saw the Wii prototypes. I just get the impression that Sony really haven't got their 'finger on the pulse'.
I may eat my words next year if they stop peeing on their customers, but to be honest I doubt it - they know people will buy their stuff because of the badge and press releases - not because of anything the thing actually does.
And Sony produces something truelly inventive in home and LittleBigPlannet.
I home Nintendo are taking note not don't go for the people who may buy one game a year, go for gamers who buy at least 30 odd a year.
Nintendo make a massive profit on their DS line, as most handheld consoles are Nintendos - the PSP enjoying incredibly brief success based on the novelty where as th DS even now increases steadily in sales, covering something like 70% of the hand-held console market. SO there 'brain age drivel' appears to be doing very well for them, as opposed to the PSP which just about manages to keep its head above water, and only since the price dropped significantly.
In terms of home consoles, I assume by 'inventive' you mean 'nicked'. Unless of course you only have access to this page and the Sony website in your cyber travels? To be honest I think the Sony will sell very well indeed, but I really object topt he word 'inventive' being applied to anything Sony have done with their new flagship console.
The online play, as stated before, was only included as an after thought after they realsied what a mistake announcing to the workld that there would be no online content was. A mistake illustrated by the far more mature XBox ive social networking experience. In terms of motion sensing - another after thught that relies on expensive and limited gyros, detecting motion rather than action - as the Wii does.
Even the look of the thing appears to be nicked from the George Forman range of grills. The only innovation that they appear to have come up with is Blu-ray and given Sony's historical success rate with format wars, I'd really wait and see what happens.
At the very least, it's going to be 6 months to a year before any game exploits the technology enough to make it work the extra 150 notes above the price of the 360. Right now I have yet to see any games with a significant improvement over 360 games. This last nit isn't because of my disdain for the way Sony have been treating their customers with the PS3 but rather because that's how long it took for 360 games to start looking like something new and amazing. It takes developers some time to get to grips with new technology.
I really would hang on CR, at least until they de-neuter the backwards compatibility, reduce the cost of online games charges and see if Blu-ray becomes a viable format.