E3: Sony Press Event Liveblog

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Beginning with an animated video. “In order to sell gaming platforms you need to sell games, and not everybody gets that.” Lots of talking heads talking about vision.

They appear to be late starters. Unless I’m watching the wrong thing.

And IGN appears to have crashed. Playstation site overloaded. We are off to a super start here, folks.

Even sites having a problem with the feeds never have a problem showing you ads. People’s tweets suggest this thing has started. The online feeds all basically running a test pattern.

Ah, they’re beginning in one minute.

Fancy display at this conference. Multiple screens all blazing the four button symbols.

Montage of stuff, super quick cut. I recognize Tekken.

Jack Tretton coming out to that “Welcome to the New Age” song. Thanks the fans and the people who waited in line. And now he’s going to talk about Vita and the PS3 first, and some buzzwords about “ecosystem” and sharing and social media. CEOs think this stuff is more important than it is.

Batman Arkham Origins, Counter Spy, Destiny of Spirits, Tokidoki Universe are among the upcoming VIta releases.

New Walking Dead episode “400 Days” is coming this summer – in August they’ll be bundling all the episodes so far with the new one. Vita is going to be a companion for the PS4…some talk about Netflix, Skype…dudes, you promised this would be about the games in that video.

Trailer for The Last of Us suddenly cut off by one for Puppeteer. Both look decent, but the Rain trailer, where you play as invisible guy who can only be seen in the rain, is pretty beautiful.

Something starring Willem Dafoe…and is that Ellen Page as an action heroine? Yes. Beyond Two Souls. Funny seeing her as a soldier, casting I would not expect in a movie.

Obligatory car racing around the world game next. New physics. New tire and suspension models. New areodynamics model. Adoptive tesselation, whatever the fuck that is. Same ol’ nonplussed response from me. Gran Turismo 6.

Arkham Origins has Bane in it. Did we know that already?

Batman drops a guy off a building. Batman origin tale means he can still kill people and decide it’s bad later, I guess.

Aaaand there’s the Joker. “Nice of you to drop in.”

Sweet! On Playstation you can download skins of Azrael Bats or Adam freakin’ West!

Now we get to the PS4. It’s a black box! Ooh, but it’s a parallelogram.

Sony CEO Michael Linton gets dull orchestral entrance music. And he’s talking about synergy. Oh, but the entertainment is “curated for gamers.” Who don’t want to hear about your TV, music and movies right now.

Sony Pictures is doing some kind of unique access to content, “tailored specifically” to gamers. Won’t specify what any of it is, but looks forward to revealing it in the near future. Just shut up.

On day 1, access to all Sony movies and music. Take a drink every time they say “Netflix.” They’ll also have its competitor, Redbox. Pay-per-view streaming. Flixster. Can’t I get these anyway just by going online with it? I know I can get PPV on my TV already. How I do it doesn’t matter.

Finally, some games.

But let’s blather about social media again first.

Steampunk King Arthur? Jack the Ripper? We’ve got Victorian London with airships. Werewolves?

It’s called The Order. Looks a bit like a game version of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Ziplines are the new black. Killzone: Shadowfall has ’em like everyone else.

Second Son, about a slacker dude with fire-based superpowers, looks cool, but no more with that Nirvana cover, please. Killzone is a launch title; Second Son early 2014.

The Dark Sorcerer – concept video for a game that’s not real, but is designed to show what visuals are possible. It’s that old man head they showed before at the first PS4 event, but now it’s on a wizard’s body. He looks like a Disneyland animatronic. This is good not because of the emoting, but because they actually got a good voice actor. But now they’re doing shtick where the background disappears and the virtual characters are on a green-screen set. They still look fake.

Talking third-party stuff. Transistor, coming early next year from the creators of Bastion. My feed froze for the whole trailer but it looked like an RPG from the second I saw.

Don’t Starve – open-ended, randomly generated adventure with 2D characters
Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Ummm…looks a bit like Earthworm Jim
I’m missing a few of these because the feed is glitching again. New Oddworld game – full remake of the original called Oddworld: New and Tasty. There’s a zombie game called Ray’s Dead that looks like a Plants vs. Zombies knockoff. All exclusive console debuts on PS4.

Diablo III on PS3 will have exclusive items like some of Drake’s weapons.

Square Enix – teaser trailer for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. ‘eyes that see the light of expiring souls…this is a fantasy based on reality.” Except for that giant spaceship, I suppose.

Semi submerged city with elevated canals. Bullet dodging. Sword and gunfights. Giant statue boss. Bullet time. Something about crystals. Looks like an action game rather than RPG.

Kingdom Hearts III. Short teaser, but the first world looks like Pirates of the Caribbean.
Final Fantasy XIV will be on PS3 and PS4.

Assassin’s Creed IV – I like the way it transitioned from a simple stalk-and-slash to a massive naval battle. I don;t know if it’s just my feed, but the backgrounds seem pixillated. Hey, ziplines again!

Watch Dogs again. Maybe game footage this time. Like every other showing-off game, it has rain. Best street wetness so far, though. Now you get to try and outdrive police choppers. Looks fairly intuitive as far as what hacks are supposed to be performed where. Your only weapon is hacking, so stealth is the key. Oh wait, no, he has a gun now. And he can make all of Chicago go dark temporarily. Seems vaguely GTA-ish.

PS owners will get an extra hour of gameplay and a unique outfit for Aidan.

Lebron James is onscreen side by side with his NBA 2K14 replica. Looks decent.

New Elder Scrolls online game. You can form teams with other players, and presumably put arrows in their knees if you prefer. Beta will be exclusively available first on PS4.

MAD MAX? Hells yeah. Exclusive survival kit on PS, whatever that is. Trailer keeps Max’s face hidden so we can’t tell if he looks like Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy. But he has the classic car and gun. Teaser just shows him refusing to a shoot a man who’s begging to die, because he doesn’t want to waste a shell.

MASSIVE cheers that PS4 will not restrict used games. No requirement to check in online or authenticate. PS Plus membership will carry over to PS4.

Plus members will get a new title every month for free.

Destiny, from Bungie and Activision. Aliens who look like six-armed insects in Stormtrooper armor with red capes. Earth looks kinda like it does in Defiance. Gameplay demo is two-player cooperative, trying to get through a large metal wall.

Ant guys are called Fallen, and they have little hover things helping them like in Terminator Salvation. Areas are beautifully rendered and sharp – aside from that I’m not sure what’s innovative here. The comedy banter of the guys playing this demo is awful. Imagine a less funny Burt Ward.

Okay, there are “Public Events” you can join in on, like a big dropship attack. I dunno, still looks like Halo invided Defiance.

How late is this thing going? Been almost two hours already.

Cloud-based all-access library for streaming to be launched in 2014.

$399 is the price! This holiday season. And that’s all – closing with a montage. So what was the Tekken stuff in the intro all about?