Sony has now officially kicked off its assault on this year's minimalist
E3 conference in typical non-minimalist style -- with a press conference on Tuesday featuring a bevvy of flat-screen TVs and a dazzling array of video game content (some real-time, some faked computer graphics), all of which will make even a jaded gamer more optimistic about the future of gaming. There was a bit of gloating about the victory of
Blu-ray over HD-DVD, and some cool announcements, but no major shockers here. The highlights:
80-gigabyte (GB) PlayStation 3 model slashed to $399.99 - Microsoft chose to up the disk space on its Premium Xbox 360 bundle, going from
20-gigabytes to 60-gigabytes and maintaining the same price point of $349. Sony's following suit by upping the storage on the basic, 40-gigabyte model to 80-gigabytes, but
keeping the price at $399. It remains to be seen whether the formerly 40-gigabyte model will get any feature updates, like card readers or the like, but as of now, it's just looking like a little more stage for your
fabulous new movie downloads.
Download movies and TV shows to your PlayStation 3 - Sony's system, despite being billed as a bit of an all-inclusive home entertainment system, has been lacking on the content-variety front when compared to Microsoft's Xbox 360. That's
changing with the video download store, which actually launched last night. Featuring television and film content from Sony (natch) as well as MGM, Turner, Lionsgate, and Fox, the Sony download store offers plenty to choose from in both standard and high definitions. The ability to transfer movies or TV shows onto a PSP is a nice touch, too -- assuming you have the requisite memory card space there.
'Greatest Hits' games for $29.99 - What do you do when sales of your greatest games are starting to slip? Slap a "Greatest Hits" label on them, lower the price, and watch the sales boost. That's what Sony is
doing for 10 hot titles like 'Oblivion' and 'Motorstorm,' dropping their price to a rather reasonable $30.
Episodic, pick-up-and-play version of 'Ratchet and Clank' for just $14.99 - The 'Ratchet & Clank' series has definitely been one of Sony's most profitable over the years, and now it's taking a cue from other episodic games (ones that release content a chapter at a time) and giving the Ratchet franchise the same treatment, resulting in '
Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty,' which is set for release later this summer for the bargain price of $14.99. Sure, it'll only take a few hours to play through, but it should be worth the price of admission.
So, there you have it. As we said, Sony offered no shocking news announcements, no updates on '
Home,' no
PSP revisions, and no huge price drop. But the company unveiled a lot of impressive looking games and, as always, a lot of potential.
For a play-by-play account of the Sony press conference,
check out the Engadget/Joystiq live blog here.
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