Entertainment Electronics Blog

EA’s John Shappert came onstage at Sony’s E3 press briefing today to show off a new trailer for Medal of Honor and to announce a PlayStation 3-exclusive version of the game.

The PS3 limited edition of Medal of Honor will include a revamped version of the PS2’s Medal of Honor: Frontline. Best of all, it comes at no extra charge over the standard release of the game.

Medal of Honor is set to hit store shelves on October 12.

Today’s E3 Sony press conference made good on yesterday’s promise of more information on Dead Space 2. After finishing yesterday’s cliffhanger ending (with another cliffhanger), Sony announced that the PlayStation 3 would be getting an exclusive Limited Edition. The package will include the game itself, plus a port of the Wii title Dead Space Extraction with Move support.

The original Dead Space sold slightly better on the Xbox 360, but this kind of exclusive limited edition gave Dante’s Inferno (also from EA) an edge on the sales charts. We might see the same thing happening with Isaac Clarke’s next horror adventure as well.

Here’s some potential bad news for Heavy Rain fans still eager to learn more about the game’s abundant cast of characters. Speaking to Game Informer at E3 earlier this week (via VG247), Quantic Dream co-founder Guillame de Fondaumière said that future DLC for the game has been put on “indefinite hold,” as Sony instead encouraged the developer to focus on implementing Move controls in the game.

Those Move controls will come as both a free patch for those who already purchased Heavy Rain, and a re-release of the game with the Move controls on-disc. But it looks like additional Heavy Rain DLC may be a casualty of the added controls, as de Fondaumière also said to Game Informer that while they may go back to producing more DLC afterward, it’s more likely they’ll just move on to their next project instead.

Quantic Dream’s original plan was to release a number of “episodes” for Heavy Rain — calling the whole thing the Heavy Rain Chronicles — with each episode focusing on one of the characters in the game. But it looks like The Taxidermist, released back in April, may end up being the only episode to see release after all.

E3 attendees don’t always have all the fun. Before the booths in LA could even be fully taken down, Sony gave PlayStation Move its public debut this weekend at Japan’s World Hobby Fair, a bi-annual event that features the latest games, manga, and anime. We were on hand to check out public reaction as well as the two featured games, EyePet and Kung Fu Rider.

The World Hobby Fair is free to the public and the games on display usually cater to a younger demographic. Judging by the length of the lines at Sony’s booth, interest in the device isn’t particularly high. ModNation Racers attracted twice the attention of Sony’s motion controller. Meanwhile, Mario Galaxy 2, a game that’s been out in Japan for nearly a month, had the longest lines of the show. Those that did try Move walked away looking impressed, and the reason for the relative apathy towards the device remains unclear.

We stood in line for about an hour (one of the shorter lines at the show) in order to get our chance to play Kung Fu Rider. The game is played with a single Move controller. You control a bespectacled man in suspenders sliding down the road in an office chair. In his way stand everything from milk crates and road signs to yakuza and old ladies. The goal of the game is to avoid the organized criminals and roadblocks and reach the end of the course. You steer your character by moving the controller from side to side. Gently whipping the controller will speed him up. Pressing the T trigger on the back of the Move controller will make the character on screen duck back in the chair like he’s in a limbo competition. Throwing the controller up will make him jump, and pressing the Move button on the front of the device will unleash an attack on an unsuspecting gangster or strolling granny.

Kung Fu Rider is a simple game that doesn’t make use of the fidelity the Move controller is capable of. There was nothing in the demo we played that couldn’t or hasn’t been done on the Wii. The demo that Sony displayed at the World Hobby Fair played and looked more like a $15 PSN game, not a $39.99 retail product ready for release this September.

Sony is teaming up with 7/11 to bring out Slurpees based on the upcoming title, God of War 3. Kotaku reports that the drinks will be heading to 7/11 stores in February, and feature “ferocious blackberries and frosty limes” as the flavor. Blackberries don’t particularly ferocious to us, and this unfortunately beats out our suggested “blood and pained screams of your fallen enemies” flavor. But fans can look forward to more than just a syrup-based frozen drink, since the cups will contain codes that can be cashed in at Slurpee.com for God of War 3 downloadable content.

This is similar to the recent Dr. Pepper partnership with EA for DLC in its games, including Mass Effect 2. Drink manufacturers have made game-branded products before, but we’re betting they’ll see more success with these recent promotions that offer in-game rewards. As a move that encourages more purchasing with the promise of small, free in-game trinkets, it’s a win-win for soft drink companies and publishers alike.

God of War III caps off the trilogy that began in 2005, pitting Kratos against the gods of Mount Olympus in a whirling rampage of revenge. But with God of War continuing to be one of Sony’s strongest franchises, the end of the trilogy definitely won’t be the end of the series.
Sony Santa Monica director of product development John Hight told Gamervision as much in a recent interview, “This is not the end of God of War.”

“This is definitely the end of the trilogy, but we?re going to continue to do God of War games. We’re going to be very careful about what we do; we’re the keepers of the franchise and we don’t want to see it ruined or polluted.”

New screens hit the Internet yesterday, showing Kratos scaling the titan Gaia. The game itself will be out in March, with a more specific release date coming soon.

Sony has managed to stir up quite a controversy with the release of the PSP Go. Whether it’s because of its omission of physical media, the lack of a UMD-to-digital conversion program, the crappy “bonus” that North Americans got for purchasing one… there’s more than a few reasons that have caused gamers to complain about the newest iteration of the PlayStation Portable. Now even Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, is questioning some of the choices that Sony has made.
Speaking with The Washington Post, Fils-Aime suggested the Go has a “fundamental concept problem in terms of ‘Who’s it for?’ and ‘What’s the benefit?’” And it’s difficult to provide solid answers to either of those questions. For current PSP owners, upgrading to the Go would leave their UMD collections worthless (and trust me, this is not a pleasant realization). Newcomers to the PSP are left to buy only games that are available on the PlayStation Store, and at the price that publishers set — no taking advantage of eBay, used games at GameStop, or a friend’s selection of games. And either way, $250 is awfully pricey.

Fils-Aime’s comments will ultimately only add fuel to the intense debate between the Goers and no-Goers out there. Don’t expect Sony to suddenly change directions because one its competitors doesn’t publicly agree with some of their decisions.

Finally comes Sony’s PS3 Slim: slick, black, with 120GB hard drive and for $299. This slimmer console is 36 per cent lighter and 33 per cent smaller and will consume around 30 per cent less energy. Uhm… It’s quite slimmer indeed. And because of its slimmer price, the current $399 PS3 model, with an 80-gigabyte drive is expected to cut price imminently. Now, it seems that getting slim is actually a good idea.

It’s reported that the new PlayStation 3 will become available in stores from September 1, 2009. Here are some pictures:

By using the PlayStation eye and microphone, Sony is going to detect and record your emotions, including laughter, anger, excitement, sadness, joy, and even boredom.

According to the patent filing, this technology identifies emotions by reading facial expressions, as well as group behavior such as two players high-fiving each other. As you watch a program or play a game, the PlayStation 3, hooked up to a camera and microphone, would analyze your face, body language and any sounds you make or actions you perform. This gets turned into metadata which is then sent back home to see how well a piece of media is being received.

It’s true that they could get more accurate reviews and data on the way people react to games or movies, but I don’t think it’s really needed. I think sales figures and gaming review sites already do a good enough job. On the other hand, I’m still wandering if it could detect players’ laughter at its ridiculous idea.

John Carmak, influential game desiner and technical director of id software, has predicted that Sony will be the first to make a move into the next generation of gaming hardware, probably to prevent “the same kind of 360 lag from happening to them again”.

“The whole jockeying for who’s going to release the first next-gen console is very interesting and pretty divorced from the technical side of things,” Carmack told CD-Action, as spotted by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry.

“Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely.

“As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We’d like to see it be quite a few more years before the next-gen consoles comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later.”

One of the main reasons behind the success of Microsoft Xbox 360 is its release one year ahead of Sony PlayStation 3 as well as considerably lower pricing. Sony might want to release its PlayStation 4 ahead of its arch-rival. But anyway, I hope this generation could last a long time. I hate they force me to buy these new stuff.