The persistence of rumors claiming that the Mass Effect franchise would be coming to the PS3 might have stolen some of the thunder from Electronic Arts' unveil this morning, but the fact that Mass Effect 2 is PS3-bound is still pretty surprising.
During EA's Gamescom press conference, BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka took the stage and announced that the second game in the sci-fi RPG series would be coming to Sony's console. He didn't comment on what fresh or special features the PS3 edition of the game could potentially have, and he didn't talk about the first game in the series. He did, however, peg a release window for ME2 PS3: January 2011.
The press release that followed Dr. Muzyka's unveil isn't much of a help on the feature front either, mainly because of how weirdly vague it is. According to EA, this edition "will include the full Mass Effect 2 game and hours of bonus content." It's unknown if "bonus content" is referring to previously released bits of DLC or something akin to a documentary disc--or something else entirely.
Above is the announcement trailer. It doesn't shed any light on most of our pressing questions either, but it does show off a crisp version of the game that I'd imagine can make any PS3 fan feel all funny on the inside. (You guys feel funny, right?)
Mass Effect 2 on PS3 sounds grand, but there's a problem: PS3 owners don't have access to the first game, meaning they'll start out in ME2 dry and without any save file to transfer over. Part of the fun in ME2 was in discovering how your choices from the first game made an impact in the second, both in terms of relationships and story. BioWare played up those wrinkles in-game, and is continuing to do so for the third title, according to interviews. That said, BioWare doesn't seem like the kind of developer to leave this kind of thing hanging, so fingers crossed they come up with a solution before next January.