Gamescom 2013: Sony Media Briefing

Sony kicked off its gamescom press conference with Mr Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide studios using the brand new UI, browsing games, watching live streams – spectate feature complete with chat – before leaping straight into the game of Killzone he was previously watch watching…seamlessly. This was the global unveiling of the new PS4 UI.

PlayStation 3:

GT6. It’s all about “Vision Gran Turismo” for the 15th anniversary of the game. Cool stuff like heavy braking blurring your view and bringing the dials closer to your face was shown amongst a montage of beautiful vistas. It’s beautiful, clean, crisp, realistic but will it be fun? Global launch on the 6th Dec 2013. And they are developing a full length featuring film inspired by GT. A film with cars then.

LBP hub. Free to play service will launch later in the year, a whole community of little sack chums. Buy things, make levels, costumes, set challenges etc. It’s PlayStation Home for Sackboys.

GTA 5. Exclusive hardware bundle and headset as revealed at E3 2013 preorder the game and you get 75% off other Rockstar titles on the PlayStation Store.

The 12Gb PS3 model will see its price slashed to €199 in Europe and $199 in North America.

To support the transition from PS3 to PS4 games Activision, Ubisoft, EA and WB Games are supporting Sony so that titles including Assassin’s Creed 4: The Black Flag and Call of Duty: Ghost will be significantly reduced in price if you’ve bought them on PS3.

PlayStation Vita:

Games like Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, Lego Marvel and Football manager are to be joined by the portable debut of Borderlands 2.

From the 21st Aug 2013 PS Vita price will drop to €199 in Europe and $199 in North America and Sony will significantly reduce the memory card prices too.

A couple of new Vita games were shown too.

Murasaki Baby from new Italian developers OvoSonico. Imagine if Tm Burton made Limbo. The main characters face is upside down for a start! Disturbing and fantastic at the same time. You’ll have to save your character from some truly horrifying monsters using the touch screen.

Big Fest. Free to play music festival sim. Promoting real unsigned bands. When you attend someone else’s festival you can vote on the band that is performing. That’s pretty cool but how do bands get involved?

Indies:

Sony is continuing its support of Indies on PlayStation system. Blinding of Isaac hitting PS4 and Vita next spring and will be free for PS+ owners.
N++ will feature level creation tools and launch of PS4 in the winter. Volume from Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell, Muse games’ Guns of Icarus online, Wasteland Kings and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number are all coming to PS4 and PS Vita.

PlayStation 4:

The console will launch in Europe on the 29th Nov 2013 and in North America on the 15th Nov 2013

Everybody’s Gone To the Rapture from The Chinese Room, developers of Dear Ester. Brief glimpse into a world devoid of people. The game starts at the end, of the world.

Rime from devs Tequila Works had a Zelda: Wind Waker crossed with Ico look to it. This was a very early peek into what the team has planned.

Helldivers is a cross-platform, cooperative shooter. It’s next-gen Gauntlet.

Resogun from the Super Stardust devs is a cylindrical, well, Super Stardust with ships replacing rocks. There’s the usual massive explosions and techno music that Housemarque deliver so well.

Shadow of The Beast. The Amiga classic, brutally hard, side-scroller gets a new lease of life on PS4. We glimpsed some beautiful shadow monsters but didn’t get any parallax scrolling.

The Playroom will be pre-installed on every PS4 from launch so you can all have fun with the cute little robots and spray champagne everywhere from the PS4 controller.

Killzone: Shadow Fall. New multiplayer footage was shown. You can build your own war zone, drop into zones created by others and they’ll be featured zones too. Lots and lots of people were getting shot with many different and pretty weapons.

Assassin’s Creed 4: The Black Flag remote play on PS Vita was shown. You can start you seafaring adventures on PS4, blowing up ships and riding the Caribbean waves and then continue playing using your Vita if someone else wants the TV. It’s all very Wii U like.

There will also be an exclusive level for PS3 and PS4 owners with what sounded like Aveline de Grandpré from PS Vita Assassins’s Creed Liberations.

Watch_Dogs. 60 mins of gameplay across 4 new missions, hacking boost and character skin will all be exclusive to PlayStation

Minecraft and War Thunder will be PS4 launch titles.

Music Unlimited has been enhanced for PS4 will allow you to listen to music in the background while playing games.

Sony have been working with Orange, Virgin Media and Deutsche Telekom to bring reserved bandwidth for games and some other benefits. Reserved bandwidth. How this is going to change your gaming experience and pricing was not revealed.

PlayStation Plus:

All new PS4 owners will be a free 14 day trial and European players will get an additional 90 days if they buy a PS+ subscription from the PSN store in the next month.