E3 2013: Sony Press Conference

The future of the PlayStation

Sony didn't exactly do very well at the beginning of the current console generation. They had grand ideas that ended up falling quite short. They put a lot of stock into the cell processor, but it ended up making the console harder to develop for and much more expensive to produce. The $599 price reveal is quite an infamous moment in terms of E3 press conferences. That's all in the past though. A few months ago Sony announced the PS4 at a special event and talked about it's tech specs and showed a whole lot of video games. They started quite a buzz in the gaming community. People have been backing them recently. Especially after the announcement that the Xbox one would not support used games and would require an almost constant internet connection.

Sony stayed silent about their policies for used games and online connectivity until last night at their press conference. Sony pinpointed the weakness in Microsoft and struck with everything they had. In an honestly surprising move the PS4 will fully support used games. There is also no required online connection, so you can play your games offline all you want. When these two features of the console  were announced there was quite a bit of cheering from the crowd. During those cheers Jack Tretton started talking about PlayStation Plus and slipped in that you'll need it to play online multiplayer with the PS4. I'm actually glad that plus is required, because it means that maybe the online play won't totally suck on the PS4.

In another blow to Microsoft's body Sony announced that the PS4 will launch this holiday season for $399. The price seems crazy cheap compared to the Xbox One, but the One comes with Kinect while the PS4 does not come with the fancy new PlayStation Eye. The price point, being able to play used games, the fact that indie developers can self publish, and no necessary online connection are leading people to crown Sony the victor of this upcoming console generation already. I don't necessarily agree with that, but things do look very good for Sony right now.

Sony showed quite a few games at their conference as well. They live demoed Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Which froze), Watch Dogs, and Destiny. All three look very good. I wasn't convinced on Assassin's Creed 4, but before the demo froze it looked awesome. I was surprised by how good Destiny looked as well. It may be a first person shooter, but it has RPG elements and I love me some RPG elements.

Sony also showed off quite a few trailers. These are just a few of them.

• Transistor
• Infamous: Second Son
• Drive Club
• Batman Arkham Origins
• The Last of Us
• Beyond Two Souls

They showed off tons of indie games that will be coming to PS4, which all seemed pretty cool. The trailers and gameplay demos got me really excited for what's coming during the next gen. None of it really surprised me though, except for two games I have yet to mention. There are few video games that will make me jump up out of my seat and yell with excitement. Sony showed two of those last night.

I have been waiting since 2006 for Final Fantasy Versus XIII to be released. At this point I was just looking for any new about it's existence. There were a few CG trailers and one gameplay trailer floating around. The last real news about the project was from 2010. That all changed last night. Sony showed a video of the game's producer Tetsuya Nomura telling fans he was busy, but they should enjoy the trailer for Versus XIII.

I lost my composure during the trailer. It was amazing. The CG scenes were beautiful, but the gameplay looked even cooler to me. The main character Noctis was jumping around cutting fools with his sword. His movement was super fast, which was aided by his teleportation. When the trailer ended it was revealed that the game had been changed to Final Fantasy XV and it would appear on the PS4. I thought that by now the prospect of this game wouldn't excite me anymore, but as a die hard Final Fantasy fan I was proven wrong.

On top of that ridiculous reveal they also decided to show a brief teaser for Kingdom Hearts 3. I guess Square Enix just wanted to let fans know that it's finally in development. While it may be Kingdom Hearts 3, it's actually the tenth game in the series. This will be the end of the trilogy and it should be a great game. 

Even though it was reveled today that both of these titles will also be released on the Xbox One as well, Sony still got the initial reveals. It takes a lot to make me freak out with excitement these days, but Final Fantasy XV did just that. Sony had a lot of great news at their conference and it makes me very excited to purchase the PS4. In fact I pre-ordered it from Amazon moments after the price was announced. Sony is certainly off to a better start this gen than they were last time around. Let's hope they can make good on what they've promised.

     -Manny

E3 2013: Microsoft Press Conference

The future of Xbox.

Microsoft kicked off day zero of E3 with their press conference as they always do. However, this year their press conference was arguably more important than it has been in recent memory. A few weeks ago they showed off their new console the Xbox One on live television to a somewhat muted response. They focused mainly on media features, which left a lot of Xbox fans feeling dejected. In addition to announcing that the Xbox One would not support used games and be subject to strict online connectivity

To cause further problems Microsoft released a statement detailing their policies for used games, online connectivity, and the Kinect. You can find those policies here. For those of you who don't know (Although that seems impossible at this point) games are linked to your Xbox live account. So you can only sell back used games to select retailers. This kind of DRM has been being pushed for by major publishers for a long time, but that doesn't mean that it's been well received by consumers. It doesn't exactly help that their clarified policies still aren't super clear.

Despite all of that Microsoft still brought their best to E3. While they promised that E3 would be all about showing the games they had to make some important announcements as well.

• Microsoft Points will be no more. It's only real money going forward!
• A partnership with twitch for online recording and streaming of games
• Another Xbox 360 redesign
• The Xbox One will launch for $499 in November

Microsoft promised a press conference full of games and they certainly delivered. I think it's safe to say that most of them aren't for me though. I missed a few of them when it was live, but I've since gone back to check out what I missed. Since I'm not a huge fan of shooters I'll just briefly talk about what I;m excited for from the Microsoft offerings.

Killer Instinct
Rare made some awesome games for Microsoft, but recently they've been relegated to working on the stupid avatars. Even now they're still not making a game I care about, but they are advising Double Helix Games as they reboot the oh so classic Rare franchise Killer Instinct. I say that sarcastically, because I don't think that Killer Instinct is beloved by anyone.

It always seemed like a Mortal Kombat ripoff, but I always had fun playing it. KI was very much a product of the 90's and I'm glad to see that it still is. So far only Jago and Sabrewulf have been shown, but they kept their outdated character designs. A gruff voiced announcer still yells when you complete combos and there is a weird amount of blood. It looks exactly like Killer Instinct and that makes me excited. I don't nessecarily know if anyone else will get excited for a very 90's-centric fighting game, but it's cool to see that Double Helix is trying it out.

Metal Gear Solid V
I'll be the first person to tell you that I don't think MGS5 should exist. In fact I'm not even excited for it. After the new trailer Konami produced for it I am at least interested in it though. The things I learned from the trailer were that it's an open world game, game time moves along with real time (At least I think?), the world seems large and empty, you have a crew, and you can go stealth on a horse.

Kojima has been going around saying that the themes in this game might offend or scare people and I'm kind of worried about that. In this trailer there were a few scenes with children that seemed kind of off. In one of them it seemed like Snake even shot them, but it was a cutaway. I don't really know. MGS5 looks insane just as every other MGS game. I just don't know if I want to experience that anymore.

D4
Swery, the man behind the terribly brilliant Deadly Premonition has been allowed to make another game. D4 is going to be an episodic release much like Telltale's The Walking Dead. It's a murder mystery in which you play as a man with time travel powers. He's trying to solve the murder of his wife, but I assume that since he has time travel powers he'll try to stop it as well. Swery is weird, so this game will probably be weird as well. It;s the good kind of weird though and I look forward to it.

Xbox One?

Microsoft showed a whole lot more, but it didn't really resonate with me. Titanfall the first game from Respawn Entertainment looks like a fusion of Halo and Call Of Duty with mechs. It's going to be an Xbox One Exclusive. Obviously there will be a new Halo game coming to the platform as well. A new Dead Rising will also be available if that's more your cup of tea. From what they showed it seems like a lot of the zany humor has been removed though, but we don't know that for sure yet.

People seem to be thinking that Microsoft is going to bomb in this new generation because of their DRM and their online connectivity. I don't necessarily agree with that. The Xbox One is still going to have a lot of top notch first party titles and a wealth of third party titles. The used game issue may cause a lot of problems at first, but it might not be quite as bad once the system gets off the ground. We're moving towards a digital only future already, so maybe Microsoft is just taking the first step

     -Manny