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  • Shenmue
  • Panzer Dragoon Saga
  • Halo
  • System Shock
  • Morrowind
  • C&C: Red Alert
  • Grim Fandango
Games, baby. I love 'em. I love to play them, I love to write about them, and I love working on them. Play with me online sometime:
Xbox Live: twelve1784
Steam: angemorte
  • Thief 4
  • Deus Ex 3
  • Marvel vs Capcom 3
  • APB
  • C&C: Red Alert 3
  • Fallout 3
  • Ninja Gaiden 2
  • Gears of War 2
  • Fable 2
  • Interstate 77
Games, baby. I love 'em. I love to play them, I love to write about them, and I love working on them. Play with me online sometime:
Xbox Live: twelve1784
Steam: angemorte
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Sony Press Conference Blog - E3 2009

Sony Press Conference Blog - E3 2009
-We have movement on the screen
-It's the opening montage! Playing to Queen's One Vision
-This is one hell of a long opening video
-Jack Tretton on stage now, he's joking about all the leaks
-"We consider ourselves to be industry leaders at Sony and press leaks are no exception"
-He mentions that he's nervous talking in front of everyone
-364 games coming out on Playstation platforms this year, (that's PS2, PS3 and PSP)
-Sony is the only company with three successful consoles at once
-He's mentioning upcoming titles, both exclusive and non-exclusive

-Playstation 2 time, mentions that current price is $99
-Sony is committed to PS2 as long as consumers are interested
-Nearly 100 new titles this year for Playstation 2
-"Todays PS2 owners are ultimately tomorrows PS3 users"
-Talking about sales in Latin America now, apparently they're doing well
-24 million registered accounts on PSN

-Tretton says it's time to talk about games
-Says Infamous is getting good reviews and is one of 39 PS3 exclusives in 2009

-Tretton just mentioned Naughty Dog, which means Uncharted 2
-A couple of guys from Naughty Dog are on stage now to talk about Uncharted 2
-They're now demoing Uncharted 2 live, Nathan Drake is on the roof of a building in Central America
-He looks out over the city and it's absolutely breathtaking
-It looks like Drake will be guided through a linear path through the expansive environment
-An attack chopper just showed up and is shooting at Drake, the camera pulls out cinematically
-Drake is now involved in a roving gunfight across the rooftops and through the buildings in the city, all the while with the shopper chasing him
-The combat and player movement is very fluid and lifelike
-The building just collapsed with Drake in it and Drake jumps face-first through a plate glass window

-Tretton's talking about MAG now, thy're going to show some live gameplay
-Someone from Zipper interactive just came out to talk about MAG and show it off
-They are going to show off a live 250 player match
-They just showed all of the people who are playing on the big screen
-The sheer size of a MAG multiplayer match is mindblowing when you see photos of all the 256 players at once
-They just pulled out to some sort of command map that shows the whole battlefield
-Gameplay-wise, MAG seems pretty generic squad-based action, with the quantity of players being the the only remarkable bullet-point
-Squads are responsible for taking care of individual objectives
-Graphically the MAG is a pretty average next-gen game with lots of browns
-Players can call in other squads for help as well as air-strikes
-MAG will make its debut Fall 2009

-Tretton is back talking about PSP
-Tretton is showing off the AA titles that have come out on PSP
-Global install base of the PSP is now over 50 million
-Mentions upcoming games: Rock Band Unplugged, Dissidia: FF and an Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
-A Lilac PSP with Hannah Montana will be released along with other games aimed at teens and tweens

-Now it's Kaz Hirai's turn on stage
-PSP: Go is "announced," jokes are made about being the worst kept secret of E3
-Will be sold alongside PSP 3000
-PSP: Go won't have UMD, all games will come through digital download
-PSP: Go will be 50% smaller and 40% lighter than current PSP, will have 16Gb if internal flash memory and integrated bluetooth and wi-fi
-PSP Toolkit prices will be lowered by 80% for PSP developers
-All PSP games going forward will be released digitally and on UMD
-PSP: Go will cost 249 dollars/euros and be released in North America and Europe on Oct 1, 26800 yen in Japan on Nov 1

-Gran Turismo is being shown running at 60fps, contains 800 cars and 35 tracks
-Gran Turismo: PSP will feature adhoc racing mode for up to four players, as well as trading of cars between players
-Not surprisingly, GT: PSP has visuals comparable with PS2. In other words: it looks fantastic for a portable game

-Hideo Kojima is talking about Metal Gear: Peace Walker on PSP
-The main team of MGS 4 will be working on the game
-The game will take place in 1974, graphics look pretty darn fantastic for a portable game, will star Solid Snake
-multiplayer has been hinted but not mentioned explicitly

-Resident Evil is coming to PSP in 2010
-PSP video montage showing Little Big Planet, Soul Calibur, Madden, Persona and Fat Princess among others
-The PSP montage was pretty long, but it's over
-FF7 will show up on the Playstation store
-Home has 6.5 million users
-Sony is now playing another game montage, they love their montages

-Tretton is talking up Rockstar, mentions a new PS3 exclusive from Rockstar called 'Agent'
-will involve espionage and assassins in 1970s

-Talking about Assassin's Creed 2 now
-Ubisoft execs showing off the game, set in the Italian Renaissance, as we already know
-It seems like there will be a wider variety of events and NPC actions going on in the gameworld during gameplay
-AC2 will involve gadgets like a flying machine built by Leonardo DaVinci, flying with the flying machine looks fun
-AC2 will incorporate use of a variety of weapons, 30 in total not counting six that can be unlocked if you own AC on the PSP

-A FFXIII video is being shown, not the same trailer from the Microsoft press conference
-visually it looks very close, perhaps indistinguishable from the Xbox demo
-FFIV has just been announced for PS3 only in 2010, my guess is a FFXI sequel

-Sony is pulling out their new motion sensing controller/camera
-It's a controller, but they're demoing it and it seems that it's being tracked flawlessly in 3d space
-It actually utilizes a Playstation eye and a new controller
-it looks pretty awesome actually, although it will probably involve buying an eye-toy and a controller for each player
-The controller is extremely precise; they're using it with a paint program
-
It's LBP time now
-Little Big Planet is getting Disney themes

-Mod Nation Racers just announced as the next game in the 'play, create, share' genre, exclusive to PS3
-Lots of customization of racers and racecars it seems, but racers are sort of plastic and mii/avatar-like, not sure in what way this game could only work on a PS3
-Showing a video of gameplay now, looks like Mario cart meets burnout, but without the wrecks
-The racetrack creator looks extremely easy to use; it's giving me Re-Volt flashbacks
-The developer made a complete track in about two minutes and it looked pretty good, not sure if there will be a lot of variety though, we'll have to see

-The new Ico game was just introduced; it's called "The Last Guardian"
-So far it's the trailer we've already seen
-Still the same trailer we've seen, except now it says "The Last Guardian" the creature looks absolutely amazing but the boy looks a little bit last-gen
-The gameplay mechanics are very fluid
-PS3 only of course

-Showing a Gran Turismo 5 preview now
-Looks good, seems it will involve several real racing organizations and tracks, also damage modeling!

-Time for God of War 3, the final game in the GoW series
-Starts off looking exactly like you would expect: same old god of war but with much higher quality graphics
-Kratos is fighting skeletons and killing/riding harpies
-A HUGE lava creature shows up as part of the environment, now a big ol' centaur shows up to fight... big surprise, it looks easy to kill
-The kill was pretty darn gruesome though
-Helios keeps flying through the scene
-Seems like there are a lot of mini-boss monsters around, a chimera this time
-Kills chimera brutally as you could possibly want, demo ends, game is due March 2010
-All the motions in the game were extremely fluid, looked great

-Tretton is back to wrap things up
-Press Conference OVER!

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PS2 on PS3, how might it work?

According to an interview with GamePro, SCE's Hardware Marketing Director John Kohler mentions that Sony is "absolutely interested" in providing downloadable Playstation 2 games, which would be similar to the Xbox Originals downloads available on Xbox Live. Of course, Playstation 2 games would have to be emulated on all newer PS3 consoles, since those newer models no longer contain internal legacy hardware to run said PS2 games.

This brings up the following questions:
-If Sony were to go through with such an endeavour, would the emulation software be coded into the firmware of the Playstation 3 or will the games themselves be reworked on an individual basis to run on the PS3?
-If the emulation software for PS2 games is coded into the Playstation 3 firmware, will it allow the newer PS3 consoles to run PS2 disks, or will consumers be forced to re-purchase the games that they may already own through the PS3 online store?

None of this is certain yet as it is unclear whether or how actively Sony will pursue downloadable Playstation 2 games, but should it happen, I really don't want to be forced to download a copy of Shadow of the Colossus when I have a perfectly good copy sitting in my stack of games.


Source: GamePro (relevent information on second page)

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How much would you pay to reduce load times on your PS3?

It's amazing how big games are getting these days. Big-budget next-gen titles can occupy up to 50Gb thanks to the Playstation 3's BluRay drive*. This allows games to include large amounts of uncompressed textures, video and audio. The downside of the Blu-Ray drive is a rather limited read speed that has led to the practice of installing large portions of games to the PS3's hard drive. Even with large portions of games installed to the hard drive, you may still have to wait for anywhere from six to ~thirty seconds.

How much would you pay to reduce load times on your PS3?
I don't find those load times to be a big nuisance. However for those ADD-riddled gamers who can't sit still for that long, ExtremeTech has tested the effects of installing a high-performance solid-state drive, (SSD), in a Playstation 3. They find that load times are reduced quite a bit. The difference between the PS3 HDD and the SSD"anywhere from 33% to over 40%. The question is, are you willing to dish out $600-700 for such an upgrade?
Check out ExtremeTech's article here.

*Let's put 50Gb into perspective. Back in 2001 I was absolutely shocked that a full install of Baldur's Gate II was going to occupy 2Gb of my 10Gb hard drive. That's a 2,400% increase in the size of what we consider a 'big game.'

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