One Year Later, Did These PS3 and PSP Promises Come True?

1) These Sony people predict, plan and promise a lot of stuff, going for an A in ambition, surely. Too ambitious, as you’ll see.

2) Nothing beats the accuracy of a live game demo for showing something that will prove to be true to the hype. Sony had many games played live on stage at E3 last year, and all that have been released have played at least as well as shown.

3) It’s the year of the PlayStation every year in Sony land, it seems.

Sony, your E3 2009 promises are being checked today – exhaustively.

Background: The Sony press briefing occurred on June 2 in Los Angeles. This showcase lasted one hour and 57 minutes.

“2009 will be best year ever”

PlayStation U.S. boss Jack Tretton said ’09 will be the best year ever for PlayStation.

Verdict: I’m going to say no. Come on, Jack, ’09 wasn’t as good as the GTA III, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X and Ico year that was 2001, right?

… and this is why

Tretton rattled off some huge games scheduled for PS3: Modern Warfare 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Heavy Rain, “Rock Band Beatles” (whoops!) and more. “In 2009, if you want to have the ultimate gaming experience, you need PlayStation.”

Verdict: Of course! These games all came to PS3. Easy call there. But may I point out that a couple of those games didn’t come out until 2010?

Remember the PS2?

We were told that there would be 100 new titles for PS2. Tretton said that the PS2 would launch in Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay in the summer of 2009.

Verdict: Hmm. Not sure. Pardon me if I skip checking this one. The PS2 launched in Brazil this past November. I’m not sure about Paraguay and Uruguay, but that’s my fault, not Sony’s.

Depends on your definition of “35”

Tretton said inFamous was one of more than 35 games coming out in 2009 on the PS3 that would be platform-exclusive.

Verdict: Misleading in that there were not 35 PS3 exclusive games in game stores in 2009. About two-thirds of Tretton’s total were downloadable PlayStation Network games; not necessarily bad games but not the kind of games platform holders usually count when boasting of the number of their exclusives.

Merely Accidental Gaffe

After setting up an impressive live demo of Uncharted 2, about which no promises were made other than the game would be cool, Tretton set up a live demo for MAG. Following the demo, Tretton said he was looking forward to seeing MAG make its debut on PS3 in the fall.

Verdict: Nuts. He should have said “January.” Then I wouldn’t have to dock him any points. But, yeah, Uncharted 2 was cool, indeed.

The PSP is still worth playing, promise

On the PSP front, Tretton dated Dissidia Final Fantasy for August 25 and Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines for November 10, and a Hannah Montana -bundled lilac PSP in July. Tretton said that the PSP would get Petz, Loco Roco 2, Patapon 2 and Rock Band Unplugged by the end of the year.

Verdict: Right about FF and most of the rest, a week early about AC.

Go-time

Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed the “worst kept secret of E3,” the disc-less PSPgo, which he assured us would not replace the PSP 3000 or the UMD. He said the unit would have 16 GB of internal flash memory and built-in wi-fi.

Verdict: On the money! More so than he wanted to be, methinks.

Stuff that is easy to forget

Hirai said that Sony would improve the tools PSP owners could use to move media from their computers to their PSPs with a new program called Media Go. And, he said, a fall-scheduled application called SensMe could be used to detect a PSP owner’s music taste and configure their music playback based on their mood or other preferences. He said that PSP development tool-kits would drop 80% in cost, to make development more viable.

Verdict: Yes, this stuff came out. SensMe was out on October 1. Did you use it?

At least, a way to download PSP games often and legally

Hirai: “All PSP titles, moving forward, will be digitally distributed via the PlayStation store and at retail via UMD as well.”

Verdict: Not all of the PSP games released in the PSPgo era came out simultaneously on UMD and digitally. LittleBigPlanet PSP, for example, lagged by a week. But Sony has stuck to the digital release strategy and third parties have been following along. There may be a PSP UMD game or two, such as January’s Shadow of Memories from Konami, that has not been released digitally in the U.S. But most new UMD games do appear to have received a digital release since late last year.

Cheaper than a… PS3

The PSPgo was dated for October 1 and priced at $249 and 249 Euros and 26,800 yen in Japan in November.

Verdict: Correct. But not a price that people loved.

Gran Turismo PSP… Lives!

Kazunori Yamauchi took the stage to announce Gran Turismo PSP, the Duke Nukem Forever of Sony’s portable, a game so many years in the hyping and making. Yamauchi described GT PSP as a full-scale edition, running at 60 frames-per-second with 800 cars and 35 tracks. “This is not a shrunken down sub-set of the series.” Users would even be able to trade their cars with each other. The game was dated for October 1.

Verdict: Wow. Let’s just give this a complete true/thumbs-up/yes for actually being real. This game actually came out! I wasn’t expecting that. It came out on October 1, to boot.

Actually, this is the “next major release” in the Metal Gear Solid series

Tretton hyped the coming launch of a LittleBigPlanet PSP game as well as new Sackboy costumes for PlayStation 3 based on Pirates of the Caribbean, Cinderella and The Incredibles, starting to launch in the fall.

Verdict: The Pirates and Incredibles packs came out. The Cinderella stuff has not.

Track mania

ModNation Racers was revealed, and a track was made live on-stage, using the game’s slick track-creating interface. The creators promised a 2010 release.

Verdict: Looked good. The game’s track-maker would work as demonstrated when the game shipped in 2010.

A look into the far future

Tretton introduced a trailer for The Last Guardian, the final game in a trilogy that started with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Then he showed us a teaser for Gran Turismo 5. Finally, we got a live demo of what Tretton said were “the first few minutes” of God of War III. The game’s director, Stig Asmussen, said God of War III would be released in March, 2010.

Verdict: No reason to think these games aren’t coming to PS3, though the God of War III demo actually undersold just how topsy-turvy and action-packed the first minutes of Kratos’ PS3 debut would be. The demo was taken from the lead-up to the fight with Helios, not the game’s more titanic opening sequence. Perhaps Tretton meant these were the first few minutes that we were seeing, not the first few minutes of the game. That would explain it. Stig nailed the release date.

Final Judgment: This was a bold showing by Sony full of more and, Natal aside, more ambitious promises than the Microsoft and Nintendo E3 2009 events. Unfortunately, it was also the press conference with the most whiffs, missing the release dates of MAG and Move and a batch of PSP games. Oddly, the constrained hype for the PSPgo was spot on. For making such a big deal of the motion controller and getting that timeframe so wrong, and for being somewhat smoke-and-mirrors with some of the hype here (35 PS3 exclusives?), Sony gets a C.