Sony Gamescom Press Conference Round-Up

With Sony’s Gamescom press conference over, the gaming community has had to try and collect itself from all the amazing announcements. Some might argue that this showing was maybe even more impressive than their E3 showing.

So, this is GodisaGeek’s round-up of what happened at PlayStation’s Gamescom presser.

Firstly, SCEE president Jim Ryan came out welcomed everyone to the event. Straight off the bat, Sackboy was the focus. We got a trailer for LittleBigPlanet Vita, a release date of September 19th and an announcement of a Vita bundle with the game that will retail at €249.99.

PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale was then highlighted and we got confirmation of a few new characters. Spike (Ape Escape), Ratchet & Clank, Dante (DmC reboot) and of course, Sackboy. A few of these were leaked a few weeks back, so announcing them all in one fell swoop seemed like the only thing they could do. One obvious, yet genius thing that was also announced here was Cross Buy. If you buy PS All-Stars on PlayStation 3, you will get the Vita version for free! This is an initiative that Sony are planning on focusing on in the future as Sly Cooper and Ratchet & Clank will be getting the same treatment.

To continue on the Vita train, we got trailers for Assassin’s Creed: Liberation which showed off some of the special features in the game. Then, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified was brought up. The game will feature 4 V 4 multiplayer and will have popular CoD modes like Kill Confirmed and TDM. Sony will also be releasing a special CoD stylized Vita that will come with the game in a nice bundle. As was announced at E3, PSOne Classics are coming to the Vita and the official date is the 28th August.

Media Molecule’s Alex Evans took to the stage then to announce a new IP from the studio called Tearaway. The PS Vita title’s main character is called Iota and the game takes place in a world made from paper. Everything within the environment is also said to be interactive. There was an on-stage demo and the game seemed to utilise the Vita’s unique features really well. There was a lot of buzz about this game after its appearance.

There was no stopping the Vita here as we were then greeted by a live-action-mixed-with-gameplay trailer for Killzone: Mercenary. To continue on the handheld styled theme, PlayStation Mobile was then the focus of proceedings. Via your PSN ID, you’ll be able to buy specific games for your PlayStation certified Android devices, which will also be playable on the Vita. Two new PlayStation certified partners were also announced here, ASUS and Wikipad.

The PS3 Essentials range was then revealed. It basically looked like the Platinum range, but rebranded. Games will cost €19.99. The Cross-Controller implementation for LittleBigPlanet 2 was then shown off through a live demo. We saw how the Vita interacted with the PS3. It was all very Wii-U like. At one stage, the player switched the action on screen to the Vita’s OLED screen. It was fluid and seemed pretty flawless.

PlayStation Plus was the next topic of conversation. A few things made PlayStation Plus more desirable to non subscribers I’m sure. Firstly, we were told that Red Dead Redemption will be added to the Instant Game Collection in September. Additionally, cloud storage on PS+ has been bumped up to 1GB from 250MB. Finally, the PS Vita is also going to be in future PlayStation Plus style deals, but none of which were announced. For those that are enticed, Europeans get a 25% discount for two weeks, starting on the 5th September.

Wonderbook was then highlighted and it was much of the same thing that we saw at E3, minus the live on-stage demo. Book of Spells was shown, as was Diggs Nightcrawler – a story on a crime solving worm/caterpillar/creepy crawly. Two pretty big announcements for the peripheral, are the partnerships with Disney and with BBC. There were no particulars discussed concerning the Disney announcement, but Sony will be working with BBC to bring an interactive version of Walking With Dinosaurs to the Wonderbook.

FIFA 13 was also revealed to be Move enabled. Executive producer of FIFA at EA Canada, David Rutter, was on stage to describe what was happening in a live demo. Basically, you can use the Move to direct players on off the ball runs and you can apply some swerve to shots by twisting the Move controller.

More exclusives were coming up next in the form of Until Dawn, Rain and Puppeteer. Supermassive Games are the studio behind the PS Move teen horror inspired Until Dawn. The game was very reminiscent of Cabin in The Woods, or something of that ilk. Seemed cheesy, but could be good fun.

Then we were told about two PSN titles that will be coming in the future and they looked equally brilliant, but in many different ways. First of all, Rain is a game from Japan Studios where the lead character is a young boy who has become invisible and can only be seen in the rain as the drops make him visible. When not out in the lovely Britisheque weather, you can only see his wet foot prints and the such.  Very difficult to tell what genre of game this is, a puzzle/platformer would probably be a safe guess though.

Puppeteer looked like a different game in tone, but just as impressive. The story sounded very much inspired by Pinocchio as a young boy has been turned into a puppet in a strange world. In the world, his head was bitten off and he can now switch craniums…there’s probably a reason why! A pair of scissors are his trusty weapon in this gorgeous 2D platformer. It looked colourful and imaginative.

To finish off the show, just like E3, another trailer for The Last of Us and it still looks incredible!

In short, Sony absolutely killed it in Germany. With plenty of exclusives and a much needed spotlight on Sony’s fledgling handheld, one company owns Cologne tonight and that company is Sony.