Sony Press Conference live blogging!
Right now we're getting two decades of commercials.
Okay, the actual press conference begins. "We're strengthening the Playstation ecosystem." OOoh. Not pretentious at all. "The gamer is the focal point of the Playstation system." Okay, cross of the pandering to the gamer box from the Sony conference bingo card.
First thingee- we're expanding Vita to the living room... put we'll tell you more about that later this year. Gee. Thanks.
And the stream dies just as they announce the PS4. Boy, not a good omen there.
Okay, found a working stream again. Using x86 architecture, just like a PC. 8 Gigs of memory. (Matching my 3 year old laptop. Sigh.) Hard drive, so the stream only rumors weren't true. Dual shock 4 controller. Looks like the old dual shocks, but with touch pad, ala a notebook, light bar, share button and headphone jack. Plus some other thing that I missed.
"Easy conversion from PC to PS4." Hallelujah. Shows off some Unreal 4 footage.
Showing off a new title, "Knack" with a robot that gets bigger by absorbing destroyed stuff. He's fighting some very 40k looking "Goblins." More well spoken than Orks though in cutscenes.
Back to the console- suspend function, ala the Vita. Hit power button, current game will be frozen to be resumed until the new time you hit the power button. Also, games need to be playable as you download them.
And now the "social aspects of gaming." Allow me to doze off for a sec. Hit share button on controller and the system will upload a few minutes of gameplay to the cloud. Your friends will be real world friends, with real names and pictures gathered from your social network! (The ones that I specifically try not to upload photos and my real name to?) Tablet and Vita connectivity. Showing off friend gaming info wall, ala Steam. "We'll try to predict the next game you buy and download it to your console so that you can play it in an instant!"
Wow. Okay, that's a neat trick, but I really don't want you downloading crap to my console without me asking. Your system updates are annoying enough, but to have my connection tied up and to have my hard drive space eaten up just because you think I might want Madden loaded up, just in case, is pretty damn annoying.
Ugh. PSN network time. Faster speeds, fine. "We'll let you know when your friends buy a new game!" I hope it's the Steam way of doing that rather than a popup, like I suspect it might be. Trying to have all title downloadable day 1. Tie-ins with Ustream and Facebook. Again, ick. Also demos for most every game. "Friends can comment while you're playing!" Wow. That won't be annoying.
Whoops. "PS3 titles not natively supported on the PS4." But then a brag that the cloud service will allow all PS1, 2, 3, Vita, etc. games could be played on the PS4. So, the water is wet and dry? Also, Rockstar not having GTA V on the PS4 might suck.
Developer time. Quantic, Double Fine, Worldwide, Harmonix. "Your system will be aware of what is in the room." Okay, once again, stop with the creepy intrusions into my life. I try to avoid data mining already and for you to be bragging about doing it... not cool.
Oh, hey. Games. A new Killzone: Shadowfall. My tweets are comparing it to Crysis 3, graphics-wise, and not in a positive sense. I'm not the biggest graphics-guy myself, but I'm not seeing anything here that looks better than Black Ops 2 or Halo 4.
Ooh. Cars. Gran Turismo? No. Drive Club. New IP. "Team based racing." And fitting our "permanently connecting social lives." Whimper. Seriously, I want to be left alone while I drive suckily.
Sucker Punch time. Showing a world (Seattle) where cameras are everywhere. Hey, it's PS4-land! Anyway, it's inFamous: Second Son. Cole doesn't seem to be the lead in it. (I think he's dead in at least some of the inFamous2 endings, so it makes sense.)
Stream is stuttering heavily now.
The guy who made Braid is up now. "The Witness." You explore an abandoned island. But it's also about epiphanies! Yeah, it's the Braid guy alright.
Quantic is here, babbling about polygon counts ad how expressive a character can look on a PS4. The character shown does look remarkably lifelike. Very low uncanny valley feelings there.
Oy, every stream seems to be getting hammered now. Almost slide-showish in quality.
Media Molecule- can't really tell what the hell is being discussed. I'm getting 1 sentence in ten. Sony's apologizing for the stream on Twitter. Anyway, it's something move-based and seems to be the PS4's Wii Music title. Yeah, remember that? It's something with puppets.
"Every major third party developer will be supporting the PS4."
Capcom. Huh. 3d animation in Japanese is "3d animation." Who knew? "Long history with Sony." Ooh. Onimusha sighting. I miss that series. "Code Name: Panta Rhei" New engine for game design. Showing off new IP using the engine. Fantasy based. Swordsman fighting a dragon in a cavern. "Deep Down" is title. (Still stuttering madly in the stream.)
Square-Enix arrives. Heh. A Japanese guy saying "without further adieu" in halting English amuses me. English. Mugging other languages and taking their words. And it's the same trailer as the one they showed off at E3. Yeah, we've seen that one. Last year. "PS4 is a game developer's dream!" And someone from the Final Fantasy team steps up to talk. (Dear lord this stream sucks. It's like I'm back on dialup.) They'll show off more stuff at E3 this year. Wow. Thanks Square. (Facepalm)