E3 2015: Sony pulls out big guns, gives fans games they want
Sony gives the fans what they want – with a bang.
Sony Playstation’s mantra throughout the Playstation 4 campaign is “#4ThePlayers.” Monday night in Los Angeles was complete proof of that.
It was also complete proof of why Sony gets the prime-time window and is considered to be the leader of the console gaming world.
Monday night was Sony’s commitment to its hardcore fan base — a love letter of sort that some thought Sony wouldn’t give to its dedicated fans. But it didn’t just give the fans pretty trailers and hope for amazing content in the near future. Instead, they gave the fans proof that great things are coming and showed everyone gameplay footage, the key to their successful 90-plus minute showing.
After a quick introduction by Shawn Layden, the President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony opened their conference with a bang, leading off with gameplay footage of the heavily anticipated game The Last Guardian, a game that was originally announced back during the Bush administration, was said to be cancelled and is now back to life and looking stronger than ever.
Fans and media members at the conference and those in the select movie theaters across the country at Playstation’s E3 Experience were loud and excited the second the animated boy was running around the screen, followed by his feathery bird-dog companion.
“I could not be happier, standing here today,” Playstation boss Shuhei Yoshida said. “You don’t know how long I have waited for this moment to introduce The Last Guardian.”
With the tone set at the highest level from the very beginning, Sony continued the strong momentum. They continued the night with Guerilla Games newest IP Horizon: Zero Dawn, an action-RPG game that makes Turok seem G-rated, then followed that up with the new Hitman and Street Fighter 5’s new characters.
Then came No Man’s Sky, which continues to impress upon every stage demo that Hello Games performs it on. By the time this game comes out, it’s almost safe to say that everyone will know how to play it. However, instead of just seeing the traveling and exploring part of the game, we got to see some light combat in No Man’s Sky, an added dimension to an already very promising title.
Media Molecule took the stage and impressed and confused the big audience once again, introducing their artsy game Dreams, followed by Camp Santo’s thriller Firewatch and then Sony showed off Destiny’s newest upcoming DLC, The Taken King. They followed that with a surprisingly exciting new trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, showing off the game’s new female character, Evie.
That’s when Playstation played the next ace in their hand.
Adam Boyes announced the also heavily-anticipated and requested Final Fantasy VII remake, a project that many thought Sony just dusted off of their shoulders. While it wasn’t described as a Playstation exclusive (it’s coming to PS4 first), the fact that it was announced during Sony’s presser spoke volumes.
Even after The Last Guardian and FF7 the mic-dropping wasn’t done. The third ace up Sony’s sleeve was the announcement of Shenmue 3 being in the works. However this one came with a catch. While fans are finally getting the proper ending that they’ve been requesting for the last decade and a half, Director Yu Suzuki created a Kickstarter, asking fans to help him raise money for the project.
“Since the release of Shenmue 2, now 14 years ago, I have been greeted by the passionate outpouring of dedicated fans and Shenmue community members wherever I go,” Suzuki said on his Kickstarter page. “They all want to know one thing: ‘When will Shenmue 3 be coming out?’ With the advent of games using Kickstarter during the past few years, the new and no frequent demand for the fans has been, ‘Do a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3!’
“If Shenmue 3 was going to get made, I wanted to make it with the fans. Through Kickstarter, I knew that could happen. Together, with Shenmue fans everywhere, I knew we could build the game that the series deserves.”
At time of press, he’s already surpassed his $2 million goal, and he did that in just the first night. There’s still 31 days to go.
Sony continued to climb and climb throughout the conference until the Shenmue 3 announcement. From there, Andrew House talked a little bit of business about Morpheus and Playstation Vue, Sony spent a few seconds on PS Vita, simply went through the motions of their Call of Duty: Black Ops III demo (something that Microsoft didn’t show in their presser earlier in the day) and did to Star Wars what they did with Final Fantasy (bring in the kids game first before the real title).
But they saved their secure big gun for last in the form of Uncharted 4. The demo itself started off with a dead controller and everyone admired the atmosphere that protagonist Nathan Drake just hung out around as the “technical difficulties” were sorted out. Once they restarted the demo and got it going, everyone got to see Uncharted 4 in its true light, and it provided a very solid conclusion to a very solid conference.
While Sony easily grabbed whatever momentum Microsoft had earlier in the day, their conference comes with quite a big catch. Although everyone got to see their favorite upcoming titles like The Last Guardian, the Final Fantasy VII remake, No Man’s Sky and the new titles like Horizon and Firestorm, we didn’t get specific release dates for any of those. That is something to possibly take note of, especially when it comes to Final Fantasy VII, considering how anticipated that game is going to be. It took Sony eight years to get gameplay of The Last Guardian out, we could be in for a decade-long wait for the FF7 remake, and maybe for Last Guardian as well, despite the 2016 promise. There were also not a lot of announcements, if any, of first-party titles coming out in 2015, another slightly disappointing thing to note.
The lone titles that are coming out this year that were shown at Sony’s E3 presser were Batman: Arkham Knight, which comes out next week, Destiny’s DLC, The Taken King, which will be released on Sept. 15 and Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which comes out in the Fall.
Minus the lack of release dates and first-rate content coming out this year, Sony kept the momentum at a high throughout most of their conference, dropping the mic time and time again. Each of their titles show a lot of promise and the showing by Sony was definitely a great sign to see as we start to go into the meat of the current Playstation 4 cycle.