PS Move Launch Date and Price Announced, Portal 2 For the PS3

Sony took the stage for the last major keynote of E3 this afternoon, splitting their attention evenly between hardware improvements and new games. First, they talked about 3D technology — Sony plans to try driving 3D adoption in a similar way to what they did with Blu-ray, with 20 titles planned for March 2011 or earlier. Headlining those will be Killzone 3 (coming February 2011), Gran Turismo 5 (coming November 2nd), Tron Evolution, Mortal Kombat, and Crysis 2. Sony also released launch details for their PS Move motion control system. It will be released on September 19th in the US, the motion controller will cost $50, and the navigation controller will cost $30. Several games will get retroactive Move support, such as Resident Evil 5, Heavy Rain, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. An RPG called Sorcery was demonstrated; your character has a wand that's very similar to the controller, and you throw arcane bolts or draw walls of fire just as you'd expect. Read on for more about Sony's E3 announcements.

Sony also unveiled a new campaign for the PSP, apparently designed to compete with phone games. Upcoming titles include Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalkers, Invizimals (an augmented reality game that makes use of the camera), God of War: Ghost of Sparta, and Kingdom Hearts. Moving back to the PS3, they gave a presentation on LittleBigPlanet 2, emphasizing how it is a platform for all kinds of games. Users will be able to create almost any type of game within LBP 2 — FPS, RTS, RPG, racing, space shooters, etc. They showed several brief demonstrations created in a short period of time, and it appears to be a very robust set of tools.

Next, Sony announced a long-rumored subscription service for the PlayStation Network called PlayStation Plus. It's intended to provide additional services to gamers for $50 a year. Existing PSN features won't change, and PSPlus will provide access to betas, themes, discounts at the Store, and other services. The crowd wasn't particularly pleased at this, and Sony quickly moved on to upcoming games. Valve's Gabe Newell came out on stage and announced that Portal 2 will be coming to the PS3, apparently with some limited Steam Cloud integration. We also got presentations on Dead Space 2 and a new Twisted Metal game planned for 2011

Re:Couldn't they make the Move less goofy?

[h4rr4r]

If you are going to play a computer game play it on a computer. I say this as the owner of a PS3, so calm down fanboys. Games are best on the system they were designed for, PS3 <-> 360 ports are ok, PC to console or the other way never works.

Re:Move support in Portal 2.

[interkin3tic]

Why would that be any better for a controller than Kinect (formerly known as Natal)?

Precision, timing, and buttons. I can't imagine detecting where your arm is pointing being laser-pointer accurate, which you would like when making tricky portal shots. There's also latency with kinetic that wouldn't be good for puzzles like near the end of portal 1 (think, having to shoot a portal as you're flying through the air). And how would you shoot without a button? Stamp your foot?

killzone, crysis, dead space etc.

[mentil]

Am I the only one who's getting really sick of shooters? It seems 1st and 3rd person shooters are the "go-to" safe bet genre nowadays, like platformers were in the early '90s. There's only so many times I can shoot the same mooks with the same automatic rifles before I stop enjoying it. There's always another new element promising deeper gameplay (cover mechanics, stealth, vehicles) but you're still aligning the crosshair with the head and pulling the trigger like you were 13 years ago.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but most of the major game announcements at E3 are sequels or riding the coattails of a different blockbuster series. Aside from Last Guardian, all of the atypical games I'm looking forward to are indie games.

Re:Other OS feature

[Narishma]

E3 is a gaming conference/show. Nobody there cares about OtherOS.

Re:Back to the Future Part 2

[X0563511]

Of course, the people without proper depth perception will bitch and whine about it. After all, if they can't enjoy/utilize it, nobody should.

(This is the same crap you see regarding 3D movies)

Re:Other OS feature

[TrancePhreak]

So what happens if someone attempts to hack the PS3 using the Play Game feature?

Re:Couldn't they make the Move less goofy?

[rxan]

My problem is that so few games are designed with the PC in mind today. Most developers are going multiplatform which essentially means console focused games (ie: lowest common denominator).

Microsoft has been failing in the PC gaming department lately. They have the Games for Windows brand and those games often don't have 360 controller support. Even when a game is ported to the PC from the 360 it often has the 360 controller support stripped out or useless. If the controller isn't supported then the PC interface is usually a crap port.

I love the PC because you have the greatest graphics anywhere. But the supporting companies always gimp it for us. WTF?

Re:Wrong, buttons have no latency and Move is fast

[illumin8]

Furthermore, as stated there is an actual button - which means zero latency

I have to take issue with this whole "zero latency" statement. On any game system, whether it be console or PC, there is no such thing as zero latency. Even if the console acknowledges your button press instantly, you still have the latency between now and the next framebuffer update to the video screen, which is at least 1/30th or 1/60th of a second.

On modern consoles, it is even worse. The PS3 uses a bluetooth communications protocol with it's controllers. This means that your button press has to be packetized and sent through the 7 layers of the OSI model across an inherently slow and subject to interference wireless connection, then depacketized and processed by software on the other end. The best thing you can hope for is that you only have 25-50 ms of latency and that it is unnoticeable to most players. This same thing is true of Xbox360 and Wii as well.

If you want to minimize latency, first you have to get rid of all wireless controllers and go back to corded joysticks or keyboard controls. Then you need to get a framebuffer (and CRT) that can refresh at 120hz or higher. This is why professional FPS players don't want anything other than a keyboard, mouse, and a real CRT. With a 120hz. refresh rate and a hard-wired keyboard/mouse, FPS players can get their latency down to around 8.33 ms (1000 ms in a second divided by 120 frames per second) which, while faster than most players can react, makes a difference to fighter pilots and other trained professionals.

All of this has been dumbed down in modern consoles to the point that latency is an extreme joke and we must calibrate our Rock Band setups to account for almost 100 ms of latency due to slow processing HDTVs, wireless controllers, and interference.

Give me back my keyboard/mouse, and Sony Trinitron CRT any day - and get off my lawn!