E3 2015: We Talk Over the Sony Press Conference

I am glad The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy VII remake bases were covered I guess? No Mans Sky looks impressive and I really hope it lives up to the hype it has been building but so far I am mixed on it. Surprised that there was no mention of Metal Gear Solid V considering Sonys ties with the series.

I was actually surprised at the lack of Vita coverage but I guess Sony is winding down on that console and is preparing a new handheld. Also I was kind of shocked they didn't show off Persona 5 in any shape or form which is one of the most hyped games coming to the PS3 and PS4.

What a hell of a ride that conference was.

Fanservice, ho!

That was easily the best press conference Sony has ever done. Not just because of the fucking crazyannouncements, but because it was tightly packed, didn't dwell on bullshit, and was a full hour shorter than it often is.

They read their audience perfectly this year and delivered everything. It's easy to get jaded nowadays, but that was kinda magical.

Heard about it the conference on social media, unfortunately I was at work so couldn't experience it live with the crew and the duder chat. Got 3 beers and Carne Asade fries. Lets do this.

Honestly, this was one of the weakest conferences I have ever seen from Sony. Basically you have no big exclusives for 2015. Given Uncharted 4 looks amazing and its cool that Last Guardian finally got announced. Beyond that tho, the rest of the show was mediocre at best. Shenmue 3? Just not a big deal. If it was, Sony or MS would have picked up the 2 million tab instead of letting it go to Kickstarter and what is up with that by the way....Sony spooning people over to Kickstarter, lol Have never seen a company do that before. No Mans Sky looks ok, but I would rather play a game like that on my PC. Final Fantasy VII, also coming to PC and Xbox One.

MS just had a vastly superior show, in every way possible. the backwards compatibility was just the icing on the cake.

why can't I download it?

Easily the best conference so far this E3, and one of the strongest conferences in the past 10 years. Very surprised the GB guys are so down on it.

they did it they did it they done did it

Holy negativity Batman!

@orangecrush: I agree with you, this was a pretty big disappointment for me. Horizon and Uncharted 4 look fantastic, and I think Last Guardian looks cool even if I'm worried about a game that's been through such a development hell, but that's kinda it. Dream looked neat but I'm not sure what that game actually is outside of making things, FF7 isn't an exclusive(and I question whether that thing should exist in the first place), Shenmue III isn't an exclusive(and they don't have enough faith in the game to fund it themselves, but they'll gladly tout it out on stage to get people associating it with them), No Man's Sky isn't exclusive, and a bunch of third party stuff that also isn't exclusive.

The PS4 exclusive lineup for the entire rest of the year is Until Dawn, a Tearaway port, an God of War 3 port, an Uncharted port, and maybe the Tomorrow Children. That's fucking pathetic.

@friendlyphoenix: Do exclusives only matter for the holidays? I'm not aware of anything Xbox or Wii U has had this year that is on Bloodborne's level of quality.

In regards to my first post in this comment thread I wonder if Sony is just giving up on the handheld market considering the success of the DS/3DS and iOS and Android games. I am not calling the Vita terrible but there is nothing going for it that makes me say wow anymore.

Here Sony you can have this one.

Virtual Realit-E-Sports

That Horizon game looked fantastic, a pleasant surprise and great to see Guerilla doing something new. Despite the tech problem Uncharted 4 looks stunning.

Plus The Last Guardian, about time baby!

I wish I could remember his name. The guy with the name that was fun to say...Asad Kivilbrush? Something like that. He was a really excellent presenter. Professional as hell and still seemed totally personable.

Pretty much Sony's best E3: https://youtu.be/HXJTWEEi6BM

It is fucking baffling to me that Arkham Knight gets 10 minutes to show bullshit first person Scarecrow stuff while Persona 5 isn't even in the fucking end of press conference montage.

Scant coverage for VR and Vita because Sony is still selling their main platform by winning hearts and minds, like Jeff keeps saying. Arkham Knight got 10 stupid minutes because its out next week and they want people hyped to buy it.

I am more disappointed that there were no solid release dates. I know Sony has a plan for quarterly earnings, but I think Bethesda won a lot of people over with their hard numbers.

Pretty good conference. Sony kept it short and constantly moving forward with annoucements and gameplay footage. That's how to do it. Horizon looks pretty cool and Uncharted 4 looks fucking unbelievable as usual. Car chases in a Uncharted game was not something I knew I needed in my life, but now that I have seen it I'm totally A-OK with it. It also makes total sense for a Uncharted game to have a car chase. It fits the style of action/adventure tales the games are based on.

Sony had nothing for this year, all they seemed to bank on is upcoming games for years into the future.

So glad I sold my PS4 now.

I don't get why people are hyped. They basically just fulfilled every NeoGAF fanboys wishlist - even though those wishlists were always stupid.

Brad totally has banana mouth.

I think both Sony and MS shows are good regarding games. I'm PS gamer for quite some time now and prefer PS franchises, so I personally lean toward that side... but for many, new Halo, Gears and Forza will be at least as much if not more appealing.

Compatibility for XBO is quite good thing. My PS3 is still perfectly OK so I don't need this feature, but should it die, I'd rather have my PS4 run PS3 games than having to buy a new PS3... or sell my PS3 collection. Unfortunately I don't expect that x86 architecture can efficiently emulate PS3 exotics.

Biggest disappointment for me - not a mention of GT7. I mean, not a single screenshot, teaser... nothing. If memory serves, when PS4 was released in late 2014, PD announced that GT7 might come out even by the end of 2014, albeit 2015 is more realistic. Half the way down 2015, and still nothing about GT7. They surely must have something by now... something presentable... unless game is still in really early stage of development. I'm starting to worry that even 2016 will not see this game. Not that I am needing for racers, with Project Cards and Drive Club, but still... XBO will receive 3rd game from Forza franchise before 1st GT on PS4. Since I haven't heard anything regarding Motor Storm and Ridge Racer, Midnight Club... on PS4, it looks at this stage that racers will be a bit short on PS4...

This was a fun one. Even if it was lacking in exclusives, it was just fun. A lot of "Really? They're doing that?" moments, which is what you want, kind of. I mean, the FF7 announcement is a weird one, but sure, why the heck not.

@friendlyphoenix: I'm totally agreeing with you; it's just that Sony had the most "exciting" E3 conference, when compared to Microsoft. But like you, and most of GB Staff say, once E3 is over and the hype has subsided Microsoft will have actual legit games that you can look forward to for this year. While Sony has dropped some amazing long-time dream games that we've all been waiting for, at the end of the day those games are only like 1/4 true exclusives and are at least 18 months off from a release date.

Again, like you say, Street Fighter V, FFVII Remake, and Shenmue III aren't even Playstation exclusive - two of those might not even be console exclusive. And Last Guardian, while a very cool announce, was shockingly middling graphics-wise, and even disappointment inducing, from the looks of the gameplay.

I couldn't care less about the 3 dream games announced, but it's fun to see the fanboys lose their shit.

I think Shenmue will probably retain what was good and bad about the other 2, or they will innovate and displase both the fans and newcomers.

FFVII remake is good for people who like FFVII. Probably the remake bashers all these years were just salty FF fans and suddenly everyone will love remakes.

The Last Guardian looks boring.

I thought it landed pretty well. Not a ton of exclusives, especially for 2015. However the exclusives that were shown seemed great and more appealing than Microsoft's larger lineup (to me). Uncharted looks phenomenal (not just visually), The Last Guardian actually evoked some of those feels I haven't had gaming in a while. Horizon seems like a cool concept, albeit way too early to read into with any depth.

I like playing on a console, so 3rd party games probably make up about 85-90% of my PS4 purchases anyway. A few great exclusives are more than adequate provided the flow of cool games increases in general.

Would have been great to see some more Morpheus and I'd love to see a DS4 "elite" in the vein of what MS showed off.

brad: that destiny expansion

*silence*

jeff: yeah....

---

my interpretation for the dream game from MM was, there isn't a way to record our dreams, so what if we made tools so we could create them and let others experience them.. with morpheus. Maybe this is inline with sony's pr of, you don't need morpheus to experience this but you probably should buy it

@cakebomb: Thankfully by doing the Kickstarter thing the people who want that weird Shenmue gameplay can get it. If Sony published that thing then it'd flop just like the other two did.

That was poor.

so Shenmue 3 has almost reached the $2,000,000 goal already

TLG, FF7 Remake AND Shemue 3 in one conference!?
Best E3 in a long time.

Personally I think horizon was fucking amazing, best thing i've seen out of next gen so far.

Wait.. There are people who thought this conference wasn't like the best ever at E3?? I know opinions and all, but some things man...
I mean, you can't argue that a clear sky is blue, right?

TLG, Horizon, Uncharted and No Man's Sky are my most anticipated games right now. Dreams was interesting and can't wait to try out their VR stuff!

Pretty much all of it was to my taste. I think I'm becoming a fan boy.

I think your question regarding "who plays third party titles on console if there is a PC version" is based on the assumption that because you have a good enough gaming PC every other console owner also owns a PC good enough to play all these games.

In my experience that just does not hold true. Many gamers I know only play on console and either have a Macbook as main PC or their hardware is not up to date anymore but good enough for computer tasks so they don't upgrade.

I could not find any numbers but I would guess that PC and console do not cannibalize each other too much. My assumption is kinda backed up by Microsoft and Sony not caring/encouraging PC ports of games. If the overlap would be a big enough problem they would ensure that the games only appear on consoles.

@dussck: Depends on your opinion of those games I guess. Personally I never liked FF7, Shenmue (and think it's a bit weird that a multiple billion dollar company is pimping a Kickstarter) and I wasn't very impressed by the TLG demo. I'm also kinda tired of Uncharted. Good conference though!

@amyggen: I've never played an Uncharted game (coming from 360) and I kind of liked FF7, but not a whole lot (also; that game will probably not come out this decade).

TLG just looked like a fun game to me. Great atmosphere as well. But ofcourse you are right; after watching the other 3 conferences today I finally had one that showed games to my taste, so that's why I'm feeling pretty strong about it.

For a game that was in development for 9 years, Last Guardian seems severely unimpressive, and I'm not talking about graphically. It just looks like a rote puzzle platformer with alot of scripted moments.

I'm far too cool to get excited about anything

Sony knows whats up

Sony calling the Vita a "legacy system" is pretty much a bullet in its head for anything that isn't ports or small indie games, as if we didn't know that already.

Yeah, I'm right there with you. But I guess it must be a taste thing, it just so happens that what they showed were the kinds of games that I enjoy.

It wasn't even remotely the best thing ever. MS had a better showing.

TLG looks more ICO then SOTC and the latter was a fantastic game, while the former was shit.

Uncharted looks like the same ol' shit I didn't like before. Horizon could be neat, but it's Guerilla so yeah.

FFVII remake was the best thing they had, which I'm very excited for but it was leaked, which ruined the surprise and who knows when it will arrive.

@kishinfoulux: They had a better showing if you're only wanting to look at CG trailers.

Sony conference had lot I wanted to play. Ubisoft had several games I want to play. EA had...Battlefront. Microsoft had...Halo 5.

The Giant Bomb crew is a host of trained, aged professionals.

Meanwhile at Gametrailers...

In terms of delivering 'fanservice/lipservice' yes this conference was really, really special. But for all the bullshit EA's getting at the moment - rightly so, I would say - Sony is probably the one with the most Pre-order, DLC, "exclusive" meaningles fluff this-and-that bullshit this year. And other than Uncharted and No Man's Sky a lot of their crazier announcements felt like empty promises, that's far, far out in the future. TLG had a gameplay trailer, yes, but no actual release date, just another promise their working on it, and a very superficial demo, that, as Jeff jokingly remarked, might as well could have been all they've been working on for the past 4 years. We have nothing more on that game that we didn't already get from the second trailer shown, what 3 or 4 tradeshows ago?

The other two fanservice moments FFVII and Shenmue are both games that clearly only exist in the developers minds right now.

Horizon looks fucking brilliant, but if E3 have learned me anything in the past it's that these early gameplay showings of games that are clearly ways of rarely deliver. That's cynical as fuck, and I want this game to be good, but the similarities to Watch_Dogs' gameplay showing is a little worrysome.

Uncharted left me completely cold, same with Black Ops 3... I just think I'm kind of done with that type of game.

As the GB crew mentoined they barely talked about VR and trusting Sony to deliver on a very dicey, un-tested product, a company that is notorious for investing in new technology, then immediatly abandoning it, seems like betting on the wrong horse in this whole VR race.

I completely see why people are extatic over this conference, I was to, at least some of the way. It just didn't last through the PR spin marketing machine that was the latter half of that show, and I think what I got excited for are very vague promises that may or may not hold up.

Wow that is worse than the fanboy reactions in the crowd. Seriously guys it's a Kickstarter!!

@zombie2011: I wonder if it's the same guy who was sitting next to Jeff the previous year when they announced Kingdom Hearts 3 :D

I suppose Sony did their job by tossing out every crowd-pleasing announcement from the last decade beyond somehow finishing Half Life 3 and bringing it to the PS4, which is all anyone will end up talking about, and was certainly exciting to watch. But dear lord are the GB guys right then when you actually look at the upcoming lineup Sony is still incredibly weak.

Even of the Big Three announcements only one is a PS4 game supposedly coming out in the forseeable future, though I'm definitely as excited about The Last Guardian as everyone else after loving SotC. But beyond that, FF7 remake we had no details and I expect it will be years off. Shenmue 3 was a kickstarter that is again at best two and a half years off. No details about the quality of either beyond a bare announcement.

Sony's problem remains a lack of PS4 games coming out right now and they revealed almost nothing to solve that issue. Horizon looked awesome, No Man's Sky still looks baffling but amazing, Hitman had a cool trailer, and I'll play Uncharted. But otherwise there wasn't much there beyond the standard sequels of multiplatform games.

Remember in years past when Sony whipped out a dozen crazy indie devs/games? They didn't even have that here and instead there was ten minutes of Batman and the reveal that they spent the tons of pointless money to buy Call of Duty support from Activision. It's like Sony has already moved to the place where the 360 was in the previous gen where they decided to coast on userbase and just buy up some useless exclusive maps to call it a day.