Sony Nailed Their 2013 E3 Press Conference

This is the best press conference of any E3 I have ever watched.

I was already pretty excited for this year’s E3, but I was not expecting half the stuff Sony threw at me. 

They started off talking about the Playstation Vita and how they’re still going to maintain it and integrate it in the next generation. They quickly moved on and showed us some Last of Us footage. They then showed The Puppeteer and very quickly transitioned into some cool Beyond: Two Souls stuff.  Next up was Gran Turismo 6. They then put Arkham Origins into the fray, with exclusive skins DLC. Then the moment everyone was waiting for, the reveal of the actual system itself, a sleek black box with slants and stuff, see the picture. Looks pretty sweet to me.

They began to talk about the music and movie services of the PS4, nothing too interesting there. A few minutes later we get our first new IP of the conference and it’s from Santa Monica. It was steampunk-esque and had some sweet looking enemies and some badass guns. The Order: 1886 was its name. Next was a few quick clips of games they showed in their press conference back in February. Titles such as Knack, inFamous Second Son, Drive Club, and Killzone. Quantic Dream then showed us a funny video of an old man acting in game with a green screen behind him and some sweet lines. We were promised more tomorrow and hopefully it lives up. Transistor was the next game shown, a game made by SuperGiant Games, creators of Bastion. It has a similar art style and cool music and the gameplay looked cool too. After that they stated that they would now allow companies to self publish their work. 

I couldn’t list the indie games that they showed off but they all looked interesting in their own way and it’s impressive the amount of developers Sony wrangled up for the show. Each one had about thirty seconds or so of gameplay footage but it remained for those in the audience who could watch whichever one they wanted. 

Square Enix was next on the list and boy did they deliver. First they showed Final Fantasy Versus XIII and then they mentioned Final Fantasy XV. After the video of Versus, they said they had one little teaser for us. The screen went black, showed the Disney logo and I just lost it. I teared up and the second that they began the montage of the previous Kingdom Hearts games I hugged my buddy next to me and we cried a touch when Sora picked up the keyblade and looked into the sun as the Kingdom Hearts 3 logo appeared.

I didn’t think Sony could top that and thought they could’ve just ended it there but it got better; at least for me it did. They showed some really cool Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag gameplay but it looked like a slightly improved AC3. The gun combat was really cool though, he took out four guys with his guns before nearly getting hit by a flaming cannon ball. After the glitchy performance of AC4 they put us in the world of Watch Dogs, a game I’m very excited for. They showed some neat multiplayer mobile hybrid action that got me giddier than I should have. Then Lebron James’ face appeared and I lost interest, I’m from Ohio, but the graphics of 2K14 were nice. Then the most amazing thing, for any fan of Elder Scrolls, such as myself, happened. The Elder Scrolls Online logo appeared. I got confused and thought, no it couldn’t be. But then yes it could! Elder Scrolls Online will be a timed exclusive for the PS4 in the spring of 2014. 

After that great news came one of the best parts of the conference. The utter attack on everything that the Xbox One has taken flak for in the past few weeks were all addressed by Sony. First off, they support used games. Second, they do not require any sort of internet connection. It was rather amusing to watch actually. After the stab at Microsoft they talked a bit about Bungie and showed us some very cool drop-in drop-out gameplay of Destiny, in which a public event occurred and a bunch of players spawned and teamed up to take out the threat. It was a really cool thing to watch and has made me interested in the game’s development.

They moved on over to Gaikai and streaming games after that. When it starts they’re going to have a service that allows you to stream PS3 titles through your PS4, which is cool but I would like to know more specifics on the pricing and everything before I fully judge it. 

They ended it wonderfully though with the other thing people were anticipating, price. At $399 it is a whopping $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, a huge win for Sony here.

And there you have it. A nice little recap of the Sony 2013 E3 press conference. With the announcement of Kingdom Hearts 3, indie support, ESO, used game support, and a $399 price point, Sony is in great shape going in to the next year. If Sony and Microsoft were children I would say that Sony just hit puberty and is starting to look fine and Microsoft has become a middle-aged man who is losing all his hair and has a beer belly. I can not wait to see some gameplay footage of everything that we’ve seen here today. This is already the best E3 I have ever witnessed and it can only get better from here.