I missed the last part of the presentation, I'll catch up on it when Gamespot brings out the streams for it. Obviously I missed the Metal Gear Solid 4 showing (probably the biggest reason I was tuning in). Early word was that Sony was not going to announce a price at E3, but they proved the rumors wrong. Sony will have 2 SKUs, much like the Xbox 360 but this time both will have hard drives. Here they are:
20GB Hard Drive - $499
60GB Hard Drive - $599
At those prices I think they may not have as many people picking up the system as they hope. They will sell the extra $100 (for the low end) as the fact that you're getting Blu-Ray support with the system. Although that is well and good, I don't think it is enough to sell a system when millions of people already have tons of DVDs.
The controller also went to the old standby of looking the same as the other Dual Shocks. Smart move on Sony's part because that boomerang look was stupid. They also added in gyroscopic controls into it, trying to take a page out of the Nintendo Wii book (but not going far enough). I haven't seen the gyroscopic controls in action yet since I missed that part. I wonder if Sony borrowed the technology from anyone considering they are still in litigation over the vibration function.
Having not seen the last section of videos that showed off the "big" games I can't say how enamored I was with the overall presentation. What I did see (up to the Resistance showing, which was impressive...but more on that later) made it feel a lot like Microsoft last year. I didn't feel Sony used the time well enough to show off the power of the PS3. Instead they had the head guy from SCE come and he made things really boring from my perspective. The one thing I took out of it was that Sony is going to try to hone in on iTunes and in the end they will fail yet again.
As I said, Resistance was impressive, but dare I say that FPS games are starting to be too much alike. A world where World War II never happened and aliens are hopping around. It sounds cool and looks cool, but will it have a story to pull me in? Who knows.
As far as I know there were no games announced as launch games. It sounds like Gran Turismo HD will be out "soon after" launch (is it just me or were any of you also not impressed by the GT HD showoff?). The one thing that really stood out for me in the GT HD video was the last one at the Grand Canyon from GT4. The car was going through it, but there was no dust kickup nor were the tires making any sort of impression into the dirt. I realize this demo was built on the assets of GT4, but even Project Gotham Racing 3 has skid marks and they stay there through the whole race. The F1 game with the PSP connection looked pretty cool, although I still think the PSP is a big rip-off that they're trying to tie into anything that is successful.
I hope Sony announces some big launch games, because nothing currently stands out. Since I didn't see MGS4 I have no clue if that is a launch game, but I can only guess it isn't. In the end are we going to stand in line for a system that is $100 more expensive than the Xbox 360 with only the possibility of a minimal power gain? It's a question worth thinking about and I hope the rest of E3 gives us some answers.
I'll be back with my thoughts from Nintendo (who usually put on a good show) and Microsoft tomorrow.