Wednesday April 30, 2025

Sony Keynote - E3 2011

E3 11: Overview of the last and biggest event of the day

Posted by Alex V on June 7, 2011 - 3:10am EST

Similarly to Kinect, Sony focused a fair bit of their conference on PS Move titles. NBA 2k12 developers announced new motion control modes, and even Kobe Bryant showed up to try his hand at the game. Meanwhile existing titles, such as LBP2 and Infamous 2, are set to receive new and advanced Move features in the future. Perhaps the biggest Move announcement came from 2K Games, confirming that Bioshock Infinite will support the peripheral, though nothing was shown as it’s too early in the process.

Highlighting the exclusives lineup were Dust 514, Starhawk, Sly 4, and HD Collections. Dust514, in development with EVE Online’s CCP, will feature a futuristic military shooting experience, that’s to be linked with the world of EVE. Players will be able to interact cross-platform, though no details are known at this time. More is expected before the launch in spring of next year. Starhawk was treated with a new trailer, though no news came of it, and the game is still set for 2012 launch. Finally, HD remakes of God of War PSP games and the ICO Collection were both tentatively dated for September.

Sony’s aggressive third party support was displayed with a number of exclusive game features for upcoming titles. From EA to THQ, Sony has made agreements for various bonuses to be included only with PS3 versions of multiplatform games. For example, super cars in NFS The Run, a copy of BF1943 with Battlefield 3, and a new gameplay mode for Saint’s Row The Third.

The final announcement of the evening was made by NGP. That is, Sony revealed their next handheld to be named PSVita, with a lineup of titles such as Uncharted and LBP. Cross-media functionality from Vita to PS3 was detailed as well, for titles that support it, which allows games to be saved and then resumed on either device. Pricing was revealed to be a surprisingly low $250, given the recent high cost of competing Nintendo handheld. Perhaps the only announcement all day to cause boo’s from the crowd was PSVita’s exclusivity with AT&T in United States for 3G connected models.

Capping off the evening, Sony setup a number of gaming stations with titles that were shown at the conference. It was a good idea too, as this seemed to be the longest conference of the day, and folks just needed to unwind and finally get their hands on some unreleased demos. Overall, this was a very solid PlayStation show. The PSN outage apology was handled well, the slew of games is as strong as ever, and the PSVita is sure to find a fanbase at such a reasonable price.