Samuel_1 wrote:What a bizarre showing from Sony. The format was terrible, especially in the first 3rd, it was so awkward. However, the games on display look incredible, TLOU, Spidey, Tsushima all looked utterly brilliant and I can't wait to play them.
Sony did the right thing by pre-annoucing that the conference would focus on the big four games - it was a somewhat open way of saying 'lower your expectations' and I did! It might be the first Sony conference that I didn't stay up to watch since... I can't remember when. But I do remember staying up to watch a Sony conference fronted by Kaz Hirai that had a shitty stream in one corner of my 14" CRT TV, I might even have been using a 56k modem!
The format was odd, they had two venues. Firstly showing The Last of Us then an interlude whilst the crowd made their way to the second venue. What the strawberry float was that about? In fact, as I type, I think it was meant to replicate the venue of the TLOU2 opening scene from the trailer. Bizarre!
Also, not many third party titles shown at all. This must have been deliberate.
Now the big four games show Sony are masters of the third-person narrative action adventure - and the face-capture technology that helps them show actors' humanity. I watched a few conference reviews, Kinda Funny & Colin Last Stand. Moriarty did question why Bethesda had a conference when they were not revealing much that was new, this same question can be pointed at Sony. But I think the answer is obvious, E3 is a major platform to push games into the public consciousness. What Sony did with the big four is get the audience emotionally involved with the characters and stories so that they will be more willing to buy the final games. So this worked.
I don't want to negatively spin one of the company's great strengths but I do think that it would be good if they diversified with some of their first-party triple-A games. Perhaps a quality FPS or FPS RPG.
Sitting at home, watching it this morning not many new games were shown, there was no buzz, no excitement and no surprises, so I will give it a 6/10. But Sony did the right thing for their business by focusing on the upcoming PlayStation exclusives.
2018 is definitely an off year but it does make me wonder if the next-gen will come earlier then my expectation of 2021. Perhaps 3 of the games will be the last PS4 exclusives of 2019, and in early 2020 we see the PS5 reveal.