EA,Microsoft,Sony Conference Round-up

EA Conference Round-up

EA’s presentation at E3 2009 was a corker, and left a lot to live up to two months later in Europe. If E3 was anything to go by, then we can expect an extremely mixed bag, from girly glam Wii games to cash-em-up Star Wars games and hopefully ‘Mass Effect 2′ and ‘The Saboteur’. The presentation started at 3:30pm (BST), and was shown as a live feed from EA’s website. For more info on the other presentations being held at Cologne this week, check out TSA’s list of times. It’s like a train schedule, only a lot more fun to watch. And there’s no trains. So without further ado, here’s a run-down of everything that happened in the EA presentation today:

We start with a montage of all upcoming EA games, including something from Dead Space. Dr. Jens Uwe Intat, the General Manager for European Publishing introduces the presentation.

FIFA 10: Peter Moore, President of EA Sports talks about how all their sports products are the best in the world. FIFA 10 is the “greatest football game in the world”. A trailer plays, showing off all the new features including facial matching, 360 degrees dribbling, improved reactions and better graphics. Line Producer David Rutter takes over and thanks everyone for all the help on the game like it’s the Oscars. Another trailer. Improved matchmaking. This is a typical series of slight updates on an annual game series. They’ve introduced filters on how you can play a game, and removed exploits. The ‘Pro System’ will take your face and shove it over the top of your favourite digital footballer’s. This is all done on the EA site, then downloaded to your console. A bit of a weird setup, but this is what they mentioned back at E3. ‘Pro Club Championship’ is the menu option to take your team onto the EA site and fight them off against others across the world. Leaderboards will be available through the EA site, from which you’ll be able to organise your clubs. From the sounds of things, they have a bomb-load of DLC already created, not included on the disc of course. Even though it probably could fit. Real Madrid home-ground is one DLC mentioned. ‘Practice Match’, a bit like Gladiator Mode on Fat Princess, but with others playing with you locally if you want to. So it’s playing against AI then. Tiny additions in AI to make it slightly better over last year’s. ‘Urgency System’, means AI works faster to defend by lobbing themselves in front of the ball. You can now create set pieces, from one of 8 regions, which controls the AI path. 360 degrees dribbling means no more 8 directions of movement on the pitch. Once all of this is speedily written down over the course of seven minutes, Moore apologises “Sorry for being so quick”.

EA Sports Active More Workouts: As EA mentioned at E3, ‘EA Sports Active’ is their most well received product. It’s not surprise therefore that they’ve been working on over 35 new exercises to sell on a new disc. Moore gets his workout kit on. Journalists flock infront of him to take photos of him like he’s some glamour model. No-one is watching while he continues to speak. Everyone is looking through a lens. Katarina Witt, a German figure skater walks onstage to act as the promo woman. “I like [insert new features]“. Moore makes a joke suggesting the photographers like Katalina, even thought they’re all huddled around his own feet in the seating area below. He demonstrates a beach assault course including running, jumping, spinning cranks. Rather embarrassing actually watching a partially balding man work a sweat on stage. “Yeah I got it. Big finish!” Expect this November 2009.

Sims 3 World Adventures: The Sims franchise is big. Who would have known that bringing dollhouses into the virtual world could attract men as well as women? Julie Turner, Senior Director takes the stage and begins talking in German. Ah, and American English. ‘Sims 3 World Adventures’ will be one of the first expansion packs for the Sims 3 series. EA have sold over 100 million copies of Sims products. For the Sims 3, 3.7 million copies have already been sold in the first three months of its release. There are 2 million registered users on Sims.com, and 1 million have downloaded free DLC from the site. People create and share items on the site, and Youtube. More stats? Go on then. 17 million video views on Youtube. Half a million fans on facebook. Sims 3 is apparently the number 1 site on twitter. “I’m really exited about” Egypt, France and China as being new gameplay environments. Don’t just hug your virtual friends, you can now find hidden secrets. This expansion will feature global artists, including: Rising Star, Swis Sensation, Matt and Kim, Young Punks, Nelly Furtardo and Pixie Lott. Trailer of recording sessions plays with everyone trying to sing in Sim gibberish. It looks like quite a challenge, but for promotional reasons they enjoy it anyway. EA will be announcing more artists in coming months. A world premiere trailer for Sims 3 World Adventures shows Egyptian Sims. They get in a bother in a scripted version of discovering a tomb. Looks intriguing. Expect this November 16th 2009.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: “Most insane online battles.” New play modes are coming in this sequel; vehicle warfare and squad play. There’s a “large selection of authentically modelled vehicles”. That includes the squad bike and transport helicopter. You’ll be rewarded for working as a team in Squad Play. “Destruction 2.0.” A sniper can blow out a small hole in a wall and shoot through it, or some other dude could blow a whole wall down and tear his machine gun through the empty space. Any building can be leveled. Sounds like Red Faction, which would be amazing added into the graphics of Bad Company. The audience are asked to play multiplayer at the Bad Company 2 boothe. New trailer shown in German, no subtitles. Supposedly in-game as names float over their heads as in an online multiplayer mode towards the end ,but the action shown at the beginning was probably CG. Nevertheless, the potential here is exciting. Expect this March 2nd in US and March 5th in Europe 2010.

Brutal Legend: Tim Shaefer takes the stage. There’s so much flashing from the audience of cameras. The darklit room is practically white. … What? … Nooo! Live stream unavailable?! *mix of un-typable words* … Ok, 2 minuttes later and I’m back with the live feed. Shaefer is talking about attacking people with your guitar. The third weapon (so the guitar was the second option) is your car. You find pieces across the open world and make a vehicle from them. You can buy weapons and upgrade it. So you can blast enemy wih speakers, put armour on it or give it a nice paintjob. “Blood pops on chrome”. A feature called ‘Double Team attack’ is announced. This is simply an ally that helps you, and becomes interactive when attacking others. A new trailer is shown. We see more bright colours, original ideas of killing people with rock puns and a digital Ozzy. A free demo will be released on XBox Live and the PlayStation Store around September 17th. Expect the full game in ‘Rocktober’.

Crysis 2: Crytek are mentioned, then run away.

Dante’s Inferno: I’m getting all excited as God of War III music pours into a dark hall. Oh, no, hang on. That’s not the GoWIII logo. This is Dante’s Inferno. Senior Producer Justin Lambros takes the stage with a smile. He begins by mentioning a “new” gameplay mechanic ‘righteousness’. You can follow a holy or unholy path, in an inFamous style. Launch the gameplay demo. I’m a bit confuzzled. I knew this game would be similar to God of War, but this is too similar. Even the blade is used in the same way as Kratos’. Rubbing my eyes and continuing to jot notes, you find damned souls, a bit like little sisters in BioShock then, and either condemn them or allow them to rest in peace. So if you kill a demon, you’ll also have to chose its fate, and different attacks will become more powerful depending on how evil or forgiving you are. When I say evil, that includes Kratos-style ripping your enemies to pieces. Expect this February 9th in the US and February 12 in Europe 2010.

Dragon Age Origins: BioWare time. Ray Muzyka, co founder of BioWare takes the stage. Dragon Age Origins will give you the option from the very beginning of choosing from one of 6 character classes. Each will change the way you play the story in a very big way. Last week they announced a collector’s edition for the upcoming game. Exclusive content including a new character will be available for those buying this special version. Gray Warden trailer. Gray Wardens are the main good guys. You’ll become one of them early on in the game and fight against the dragons for your people. Looks like a lot of fighting bundled with traditional RPG elements.

Mass Effect 2: This is the “dark second chapter”. It’s a “deep RPG [that] takes a quantum leap in action”. The game will be readily playable on the show floor for those at Gamescom. A new feature titled ‘Squad Recruitment’ will see you recruit members from the Mass Effect world, and work to gain loyalty. This will be important in how you approach situations, and will affect the outcome of each battle. BioWare are still on track for making the series into a trilogy. You will feel the decisions you made in first game in Mass Effect 2, as it finds your save from the first game, and continues with the consequences of your previous decisions. That’s pretty impressive, seeing that you’ll most likely continue your current storyline onto the third game too, making your final experience much different to other players. Time for a gameplay trailer. The “ultimate bodyguard” character shown for the first time is named Grunt. He tears apart enemies, but is presented in a humourous manner. He’ll be a strong ally to you.

Star Wars The Old Republic: Massive star wars theme hits the audience in the face as the creators of another Star Wars game walks on. They tell us the dialogue facts as they discussed at length at E3 two months ago. They intend this Star Wars MMO to be a worldwide phenominon. So while we knew that every character (even ‘extras’) had their own voice actor, the team have also recorded their own German and French voices for every character. A certain family member of mine walks in and annoyingly talks about what to make for dinner. Argh. I don’t know. Why ask me? They’re showing the same cinematic trailer form E3 now, but in German. That was supposed to impress us. No new images.

Need for Speed Shift: Jese Abney, and Steven Viljoen come on stage for Need for Speed. They boast about the cockpit view, GForce physics and live gameplay. They deserve to though, the graphics are immense. There’s blurring and destauration of the cockpit when you get really fast, which looks great. He crashes accidentally, but the sudden switch to black and white, without loss of frame rate in first person all works really well. Your driver profile tells you if you’re a crazy or great driver, and rewards you for whichever one you are. There’s 150 unique challenges. The audience members can win a BMW3 at the EA booth. That certain family member is now shouting at me for not removing spider from their room. Argh missed the epic trailer! Graphics look awesome. Expect this 17th September.

The press got up before the presentation seemed to end. Tsk. Press eh? The same showreel from the beginng plays while everyone in the foreground stands up and runs off to get ready for the Sony conference. There’s definitely Spore, Dead Space and others in that showreel that weren’t shown. Maybe we’ll see them in the other presentations. Dead Space 2 footage coming? There was a woman in a Dead Space suit. I’m sure we’ll get some confirmation on that soon.

So all in all, there wasn’t particularly much new shown today. Everything that we did see was up to a very high standard, and looks to be reaching shelves later this year and early 2010. I’m sure we all would have liked a few surprises for us other console gamers, but it seems that these are being saved for the Sony and Microsoft conferences. So, with that all out the way, it’s time to deal with that spider, make the dinner, and deal with the really annoying association between my laptop and the phrase “doing nothing”. By the time this post is live, the Sony conference will be over, and we’ll have a few more bits of news for you. If you’ve already read them all, like some info-nugget-demon, then check out our list of conference times for all things Gamescom this week.

Microsoft Round-Up

Microsoft’s presentation is over and we’ve got all the juicy details right here. Whilst only three games were mentioned it wasn’t really Microsoft’s presentation, more like Lionhead’s, as Peter Molyneux took the stage to reveal some rather tasty treats.

Fable II – Fable II is being re-released in the downloadable form of 5 ‘Episodes,’ all of which will be released together on September 29th. The first will be free, just to get you hooked, but when you get to the end of one you can opt to buy the next Episode or all of them at once. Nice for the those who missewd it the first time around but not exactly huge. Sorry Peter, whats that? 3?

Fable III – This is why he’s really here. For the second time this year Petey has been the main focus of Microsoft’s big events. Fable III seems to be yet another step up form the detail and scope taking you to the seat of ruling as Albion’s King. As with the previous games The third will continue the trend of letting you play it your way. Whether you want to run it as a greedy tyrant or a generous and kind ruler, it’s your call. But as with every decision in the Fable universe, it will have a consequence.

This was beautifully illustrated by two slides shown in the presentation with a King with a nagging wife and a hoard of grubby kids and another shot of a King with his Queen sat on a gold throne with her feet up on a human footstool. Rule with greed, keep the wife happy, or keep the people happy and have to put up with the nagger from hell. And you will have a family too. You don’t see any bachelors running for President, do you?

As you can see, the choice of this high profile position brings with it a lot of responsibilities, and, of course, a bunch of new features. ‘Judgment’ is a way of casting your authority over your people and as a ruler, responsibility is always on your shoulders. The example given was of a girl brought before you in your throne room, accused of stealing. You can judge her right away but you can also investigate, find out why and either punish of reward and sort out the root problems in your kingdom. Judgments will range from bread thiefs to treason all the way to whether or not to go to war.

The game starts with you as the son or daughter of the Hero from Fable II. For the first half of the game you have to lead a revolution against the evil King with support from the various factions and clans of the land. On your way to the thrown, much like it is in real politics, you have to make some promises. This part of the game is call ‘The Journey to Rule.’ It will see you making many bonds that will vastly affect your time as ruler. Very interesting stuff.

Another thing Lionhead have been looking at has been the way they tell the story in the Fable games. Before you were never really aware of what was going on story wise until the big reveal towards the end. With Fable III this will change. Using a method of storytelling called ‘Stages’ they hope to keep you more in the loop and engaged with the progression of the tale as opposed to rushing to find out what the hell’s really going on.

The last feature mentioned was a touchy subject. That’s because of the new mechanic called ‘Touch.’ This will involve more physical interaction between your character and the people around him. Taking the strength of relationships in to account you will be able to shake hands, hug, embrace and so on. This will provide a bigger emotional attachment to the NPCs and your family.

So, Fable III in a rather large nutshell. A nut that will be cracking late 2010. Good stuff.

Milo and Kate – The last game mentioned was that darling of E3, the kids that are going to get more abuse than any of us would like to think of, Milo and Kate. The only thing said about this potentially great idea is that they’re still working on it. Yup, that’s it.

And with that, Peter exited stage right and left us all wondering ‘where’s the rest of the presentation gone?’

Sony Conference Round-up

Now for the event we’ve all been waiting for. Will Sony announced a Slimmed down PlayStation 3 or just a price drop for one? Perhaps both, perhaps neither. Nevertheless, TSA has battled on through network issues to bring you a full summary of Sony’s highly anticipated GamesCom 2009 Press Conference:

“Welcome to the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe press conference at GamesCom 2009!” – followed by a sizzle trailer showing God of War III, Ratchet and Clank, Heavy Rain, Buzz!, PixelJunk Shooter, DC Universe Online, Gran Turismo 5, Uncharted 2, before Andrew House, President of SCEE walks on stage.

He starts off with talk and sales figures, “The PS2 is the Michael Schumacher of games consoles”, while PSP sales continue to grow at a healthy rate with 52.9 million globally (17 million in SCEE territories) and 23.7 million PS3s worldwide (with over 10 million in SCEE). He then goes on to talk about the PSN which has 27 million users worldwide (11 million in SCEE) and a massive 560 million global downloads, which has generated over $280million in revenue. Home is proving to be rather popular with an estimated 7.5 million users downloading the free PS3 app, stating that content is the primary draw.

On that note, SingStar is coming to Home, set to include a music quiz, video jukebox, an interactive dance floor and “more to come.” Audi are also bringing some stuff to Home in September, with a full Audi space coming before the end of the year. Do you like dancing? Well in September Home will be updated which will include more dance moves, new character customization and a camera you can take with you everywhere.

Firmware 3.0 – has just been announced. September 1st will see the PSN getting a new look, with animated themes, a What’s New section and other great interface changes. Direct links to various TV services will also be on the XMB, with iPlayer being one of them, but the best news is that the battery meter has been moved. Read here for more information.

PSN Cards – will ‘finally’ be coming to Europe with €50/£50 and €20/£20 versions available in September.

VidZone – will be expanding to new territories across Europe later this year, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway and New Zealand. Read here for more information.

Video Download Service – available later this year – will allow users to rent and buy films in SD and HD. Coming to UK, France, Germany and Spain in November, though will be expanding to further territories throughout 2010. Read here for more information.

Digital Reader – coming to US and EU in December. Digital Comics will be available, with hundreds at launch, including Marvel. Graphic novels, indie comics and local comics as well. Ira Rubenstein from Marvel took the stage to say that Marvels catalogue will be available through the reader, including Spider Man, X-Men, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Daredevil and Thor. More partners to be announced soon. Reader will have autoflow.

PSP Minis – Smaller games for the PSP. 15 games will be available at launch on 1st Oct, with 50 by the end of 2009, including Tetris and Fieldrunners, Hero of Sparta and MiniGore. All games will have a 100Mb size limit, hence the term Mini. Read here for more information.

PSP 3000 in new colours – Turquoise Green, Lilac Purple, Blossom Pink. Some will be bundled, all sold separately.

Those who register their PSP Go’s between the 1st and 10th of October will get a free digital copy of GT PSP. Read here for more information.

EyePet – will bundled with PlayStation Eye for €49.99.

Uncharted 2 trailer – don’t get to see it but wish we could, and will almost certainly up for viewing later on.

Heavy Rain – David Cage from Quantic Dream comes on stage and asks “How far would you go for some you love?”. Heavy Rain will feature four main character, four lives, and four ways to answer that question. We’re about to get to see one of the new characters. I say we get to see, they get to see and we get to hear about it. Although hopefully we will see this footage in due course. One of the new characters came about from the fear, guilt and panic that David himself felt when he lost his child in a supermarket – don’t worry it was only for ten minutes though. This character, Ethan Mars, will have four days to find his son and redemption. The other character, Curt Shelby, is a Private Detective inverstiating the Origami Killer case. Heavy Rain is not based on repetitive patterns and violence – hoping for it to be a milestone in this new industry direction, with all the scenes being fully interactive.

Motion Controller – will be fully shown at TGS but there is a teaser video to wet our appetite, with some great examples of upcoming motion controller content being shown with everything from from party games, to adventure games, to toys.

Kaz Hirai is now on stage, saying how great E3 was this year and how amazing TGS will be and stating how GamesCom is the “third major date on the gaming calendar”. However, he’s not just here to celebrate GamesCom, he’s here to show off the new slimmer PS3 which will be available in the first week of September. It will include all the same features and functions as the original PS3, but 33% smaller and 36% lighter and will retail at €299/$299. That’s not all though, oh no! As of tomorrow, the price has just dropped for all current PS3s on shelves. As in right now! (Well tomorrow for stores as they’ll all be shut right now).

sad thing is someone will read all this

i only read sonys thought i'd put Microsofts up cos someone had a go last time i left Microsoft out

Really looking forward to Mass Effect 2, I don't think I've ever been this excited for a game before.

Other games I should be getting are Assasin's Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2, both look good.

Also can't wait for Fable III, sounds even better than Fable II which I really enjoyed.

the only game im looking forward to this year is Uncharted 2

i will be getting Cod Mw2 and Assasins Creed 2 but not looking forward to them as much as Uncharted 2

Assasin's Creed 2 looks ace, and I've been getting back into the first one as well recently. Definatly improved it, they've taken the good graphics and basic foundation from the first one and made it much better.

Modern Warfare 2 has so much pressure on it to be the best game ever basically. I'm not sure it'll live up to the expectations, I think they needed to make the campaign longer than Call of Duty 4, but I read it isn't.

I hope they have something similar to zombies on the new COD i only go on my COD to play zombies so i would love it if they put something like zombies on it although i read 50 cent was on MW2

I heard there was a something similar to nazi zombies, not sure what it is.

hope so hope its as addictive and just as good as Zombies