Aug 18, 2009

Playstation Gamescom Conference

Categories: Sony

ps3 side

The Games Convention sometimes called the Leipzig Games Convention, and abbreviated as GC, is an annual video game event which is currently being held in Cologne Germany. This years Playstation conference had been overshadowed by the speculation and rumor that preceded it. Did we see the slim version of the PS3? Did we see another PS3 price cut and maybe a price point that the rest of us will be able to finally afford?

Starting off the event we were greeted with a montage of LittleBigPlanet, God of War, Home accessories, and some Heavy Rain (man does this game look awesome). We got shots of M.A.G, PixelJunk Shooter, Uncharted 2, and even DC Universe Online. Recently announced was the LittleBigPlanet Game Of The Year Edition that will include the extra downloadable content at no extra cost, but the game is still priced at full retail price.

President and CEO of SCEE took the stage to tell us how awesome it is to be a Playstation owner and how the company will be bringing the megaton for years to come. This is all the ‘my product is better so please buy it and support it’ typical stuff that we hear at every press conference. Does anyone really care about the numbers at these conferences?

Back to the good stuff. Home will be seeing some new spaces such as Singstar and Audi. I hope Home doesn’t just become one humongous advertising space with mini games. There will also be Dynamic themes for Home which will have animated areas. There will be other elements added to Home like throwing objects and shrinking potions. This could get interesting.

Partnering with Marvel, Playstation owners will be able to download and view hundreds of comics with a new Digital Reader application including Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Not only will these be added to your PSP experience, but you will also be able to download small games specifically tailored to the PSP called miniS. These games seem to be similar to the DSi Ware that Nintendo recently launched.

Minis

Time for some Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain features four characters to take down a path that has no wrong answers. This game is kinda like those old ‘choose your own adventure’ books. You can play through this game many times and each time could bring you down a completely different path with different endings. The biggest news here is the two previously release characters; Shelby who is an investigator on the Origami Killer case, and Ethan who had lost his son in a crowd and the boy was killed by a car.

They come back on stage to show off the motion controller and talk about that a little bit more, but no big news about it right now. Probably won’t hear anything substantial until the next Tokyo Game Show.

Megaton time. Just as suspected the PS3 Slim gets announced and it will be only €299, $299 US, and ¥29,980.. The rumors were all true! Same features and function with a 120 gb hard drive. It will be about 33 percent smaller and 36 percent lighter (not like I carry one wherever I go but thanks for the weight decrease). It will be available everywhere by September 1st. Unfortunately there were no images of the new model to emerge from the conference.

That ends the show. Man, they should have done this at E3 instead. Better late than never. Oh, the new price of the PS3 begins effective tomorrow. Time to break my piggy bank and go get me one.. or should I wait for September 1st? Hmm…

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