Having seen Microsoft put on a pretty strong performance for their press conference early on Monday, it’s time to turn to Sony to see what they’ve got to show for E3. Let’s check the Sony E3 Field Report:
Good:
When Games were Shown, They were Great.
When Sony showed games, they were great. The Bloodborne reveal was great to see, the Mortal Kombat gameplay blew my mind and made me wince while No Man’s Sky continued to make everyone’s jaw drop. What little we did see of Uncharted 4 looks absolutely amazing, Far Cry 4 looked nice and slick and the Arkham Knight gameplay (yes, including the Scarecrow ‘mishap’) made me want to jump into the Arkham series. If they had more games to show, the show would have been fantastic. Unfortunately, the pacing of this conference was WAY off.
Bad:
Money Hatting
Betas, Alphas and Exclusive Content up the wazoo. While it was cool to show of the Far Cry 4 exclusive ‘drop in, drop out’ co-op with someone who doesn’t have the game, they spent too much time, flashing the cash and swinging their exclusivity sack around. Like I said in my Microsoft field report, it’s nice to know you have them but goddamn, don’t spend so much time on them.
Bad Hosts and An Awkward Demo
The Little Big Planet 3 demo was painful to watch. Presenters trying to have fake banter with each other while they are failing at their game, does not a good reveal make. The other presenters just failed to have the spark of Jack Tretton last year and his amazing mic drop, and just came across as either smarmy or trying to flash their cash. Just show your game, say a little bit about it and walk off. Simple as. We don’t want your little snipes at other companies either, especially when your conference wasn’t as good as theirs. It’s just sloppy.
The Middle Section
Everyone watching the conference with me gave a collective sigh of disappointment, when the inevitable sales figures and talk of goddamn TV content that no-one cares about. I don’t care about number of game hours played, I don’t care about the years worth of streaming video that has been made. I don’t want to hear a bad Kingpin cosplayer talking about some random comic TV series during a game conference, I want to see more games. Sony should have seen the absolute slating Microsoft got last year for doing this same stuff and just cut it out of the conference.
Overall Rating:
For me, this conference was very disappointing. The middle section sunk like a lead balloon and made me forget most of the beginning, presenters were either a bit smarmy or painfully enthusiastic, while the pacing was all over the place. The games they did show were great and did get me hyped but the absolute downer of a middle section and the lack of release dates on games like No Man’s Sky makes me incredibly annoyed. For shame Sony. I expect better.
