Liveblogging Sony's Playstation 4 Press Conference

Paul Tassi, Contributor

 

 

The predictions have been made, and now it’s time to see what Sony has in store for us. We’re all 99.99% sure we’re about to see Playstation 4announced, or its alternatively named equivalent, and Sony’s big announcement press conference begins at 6PM EST. For something this big, I presume they’ll start on time.

I’ll be liveblogging the event from here, and you can follow along with livestreams via Sony or Twitch. Our own Carol Pinchefsky is at the event, and you can follow her liveblog in addition to mine. I’m viewing from afar, just like most of you.

I’ll likely start a few minutes before six, and the newest updates will be listed first in the post here. We’re going old school, so you’ll have to refresh the page to see the latest. I’ll try to keep up as best I can, and I’d love to hear what you guys are thinking in the comments.

Here we go:

8:07 – I’ll continue to ponder that strategic decision, but for now I’m signing off. Thanks to everyone who tuned in, and I’ll have more condensed thoughts about all this tomorrow morning most likely, so check back.

8:04 – Well, they just answered my question. I guess we have to tune in to E3 where they’ll announce a price and maybe actually show the system. I really have to question the idea of premiering a new console without either showing what it physically looks like or even hinting at a price. Even though there was a ton crammed into this evening, that ended on a rather sour note. You would think the finale would have been about the system itself, but they handed it to Bungie who didn’t actually show much of anything new from their game anyway. Regardless of legnth, the presentation felt incomplete without the price/product at the end, even if we did see games, the controller and hear a vague release date. It might have been better to just do it all at E3 if they were going to leave out two pieces of the puzzle that were that important.

8:02 – Exclusive Destiny content for PS4. Not sure why four people needed to stand there to make that announcement, but okay.

8:00  - Livestream now down 20% of its audience. Length (two hours now) and neverending stream lag likely to blame. Is Sony even going to go to E3 after this? What will be left to talk about?

7:58 – Thank god, it is Bungie. So, were they saving all the goodies for today?

7:57 – It’s Activision. I swear, this better be about Destiny and not Call of Duty 12.

7:56 – ONE LAST PUBLISHER. Who ya got?

7:54 – Oh god, it’s Diablo 3. People will laugh, but after playing Torchlight on XBL, I’m fully on board that a game in this style can function quite well without a mouse and a million hotkeys. And remember, through a TON of patching, Diablo 3 is actually about 100x better now than it was at launch.

7:53 – PC fanboys are losing it right now. “Console game development is in our blood.” What IS this going to be? I’m going with a resurrection of the long lost Starcraft: Ghost.

7:52 – Chris Metzen from…Blizzard? Well, that’s unusual.

7:51 – Yes, it looks like a high tech Assassin’s Creed, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

7:48 – I’d hate to be the guy who has to write interesting 140 character backstories for ten thousand random NPCs in this game.

7:46 - New rule, you have 15 seconds to hype your game before you have to start showing gameplay footage.

7:44 – This is turning out to be a much longer press event than anyone anticipated. Nearly two hours in and we still haven’t even laid eyes on the system. The Sony livestream has lost more than 10% of its audience.

7:43 – Yves Guillemot to talk about Watch_Dogs. I forgot how big that was at E3. Let’s see some more of it!

7:40 – In the end it was indeed a demo, not an actual title. “What to expect from future properties.” Then they brought out an entirely different guy to simply say they were developing a Final Fantasy title of the system. Well, duh. No name, no other info.

7:37 – This seems to be Final Fantasy meets Uncharted. Like, I’m pretty sure these guys literally have AK-47s.

7:35 – The problem with all this footage is you never know what’s using the engine, and what’s just a cutscene a lot of the time.

7:34 – Square Enix’s turn. Final Fantasy or something else?

7:33 – One thing is clear from all these games, fire looks GREAT on the PS4.

7:32 – Medieval game codename “Deep Down.” They love their codenames. This must be Erik Kain‘s GOTY 2014 due to the “Souls” resemblance.

7:30 – They’ve developed an entire new engine for PS4. Well, you’d kind of have to. It’s codename is “Panta Rei.” And whoa a NEW IP? Get out of town.

7:28 – Capcom introducing….what now?

7:27 - Every third party developer onboard with PS4. No big shock there.

7:23 - Actually looks pretty cool, though I bet it’s a lot harder than it looks. The possibilities for Little Big Planet and Minecraft are endless.

7:22 – Annnd I spoke too soon. Showing the  Move controller as a tool to virtually draw and sculpt stuff. At least you’re not waggling it around.

7:19 – I’m really liking the complete lack of movement-based games here.

7:18 – QD showing a creepy old man head that uses at least twice the polygons we saw in Heavy Rain. No actual footage however from Singularity, which is what we thought we’d see. That’s a bit disappointing.

7:17 – Cage describing gaming as the next evolution of film. It’s an idea I can get behind.

7:16 – FYI, our man on the ground, David Ewalt, says that they’ll likely wait until the end to show the console and the price.

7:15 – Here’s the one we’ve been waiting for. David Cage with Quantic Dream.

7:13 – Puzzle game on a mysterious island called Witness. Looks like an updated Myst. I think we can all applaud that concept.

7:10 – Just kidding, it’s Braid’s Jonathan Blow. Much better.

7:09 – Developers with “unique visions.” BRING OUT THE MOLYNEUX.

7:06 – Oh, it’s actually an Infamous game, “Second Son.” Cool cutscene, I guess.

7:05 – I feel like he’s describing “Heroes: The Game.” Rather, it’s Sucker Punch (Infamous) with an exclusive PS4 title about superheroes. Stick with what you know I suppose.

7:04 – Stream. Lag. Is. (buffering)  Killing. This.

7:00 – They modeled every fleck of paint and each fiber of carbon. For Elder Scrolls VI, will we see the heat rash pimples caused by leather armor chafing?

6:59 – Stream has finally stopped buffer glitching, but now its broadcasting at about 8 fps. It’s practically unbearable.

6:58 – How are you going to make a “coordinated team racing game” and not have  it be Fast and Furious branded? Come on!

6:57 – Driveclub, new racing game for PS4. Guess they got tired of Gran Turismo making a new game only every decade or so.

6:53 – The livestream just isn’t high enough quality to properly convey what this will look like. Without being able to experience the visuals first hand, it’s all a bit…generic.

6:51 – When viewing any of these games, as good as they look now, remember how much titles can grow over time using the same architecture. Compare say, Perfect Dark Zero near the launch of the Xbox 360 to Gears of War 3 years later. They’re worlds apart graphically.

6:47 – Pretty gorgeous, unfortunately this is the week we all learned not to trust demo footage thanks to A:CM

6:46 – Guerilla Games showing an actual title. It’s Killzone…Shadowfall. No more numbers!

6:45 – Michael Denny speaking now from Worldwide studios. An accent with gravitas.

6:45 – This is a very long, very vague 3rd party support video. I think Nintendo might have actually gotten more gaming A-listers for theirs.

6:43 – They’re talking a lot about downloading games, playing before the download is done, etc. They’re not eliminating discs entirely, are they? Nothing has been said either way so far.

6:42 – Having this much lag on the livestream is doing no favors to the “fastest gaming network” they’re current trying to pitch.

6:41 - Slightly odd we haven’t seen what the system looks like yet. Perhaps that’s the grand finale?

6:40 – Lag and sound drop-out starting to become an issue on stream.

6:36 – Direct assault on the Wii U incoming. “Remote play” with pictures of Vita, tablets and phones. But to be fair, a Vita + a PS4 will cost wayyy more than a Wii U and the tablet controller that comes with it.

6:36 – You can get your friend to help your noob self through a tough part of a game by virtually handing them your controller.

6:34 – Livestream spectating through PS4 directly. Twitch will be bummed, since this is Ustream based it seems.

6:32 – Shoot, I thought we’d be able to go an entire tech presentation without mentioning Facebook.

6:30 – “When your friend buys a game you’ll instantly know and can jump in and start playing with them.” Ehhhhh.

6:29 – Co-founder of Gaikai coming now, David Perry. Here comes “the cloud.”

6:28 – Preorders taken to a new level as Playstation 4 can predict what games you like and download the sequels for you ahead of time. Oh god.

6:26 – Expected  ”socially connected” spiel where you can browse the dashboard via your smartphone or tablet.  Hopefully that means they won’t have their own tablet peripheral (cough cough Wii U)

6:26 – Instantly edit and upload gameplay footage of any game as you play. The amount of YouTube clips of games will jump by 10,000% most likely, if they’re not all taken down for copyright infringement that is.

6:24 – You can play games you’re currently downloading. Are they going to announce something streaming related soon?

6:23 – You can instantly pause and resume the system. Not the game, the system. No more console boot time.

6:21 – Knack it is. Creature made up of a whole bunch of tiny objects to demonstrate the capabilities of PS4.

6:20 – Cerny is personally directing a title, new IP. Knack? Neck? I’m not sure yet.

6:20 – Unreal 4 tech demo has prety ice monsters and explosions. Also, system memory GDDR 5. 167 GB/s bandwidth.

6:18 – New Dualshock, does indeed have a touchpad, integrated Move-ish capability. Does indeed look like some of the early leak photos we saw.

6:16 – X86 CPU, Enhanced PC GPU, 8 GB Unified memory. Believe most of this was predicted.

6:15 – Development goes all the way back to 2008 for the PS4. Have to really plan ahead with this sort of thing.

6:13 – Goals for PS4 team – “Nothing comes between platform and the joy of playing.” Also wanted to hear from developers, and wanted to know what was important to them specifically.

6:12 – Mark Cerny, lead system architect coming on stage.

6:09 – And there it is, PLAYSTATION 4! Stick with what works, I suppose. No images yet.

6:07 – “The demands for a new platform were clear.” This IS a new console announcement this evening, in case there were still any doubters in the house.

6:05 – He’s talking about expanding the Playstation Vita’s uses. Not the opening I imagined.

6:03 – Andrew House on stage. “The living room is not the central focus of the Playstation, the gamer is.”

6:02 – Big stage, cool intro video. They’ve definitely created their own E3 level event here.

6:00 – Starting right on time, and now lag free, thank god.

5:59 – We have music, though it appears to be from an unaired Seinfeld episode in the ’90s.

5:58 – Two minutes out, still laggy, no sound. Very odd. 300K concurrent viewers on Sony’s stream. Jumping another thousand every few seconds.

5:50 – If you’re going to watch the Twitch stream, I highly recommend you avoid reading the accompanying livechat. It’s a fanboy moshpit and the thing hasn’t even started yet. Yeesh.

5:46 – Confirming that the lag isn’t just me, it does seem to be universal. If it’s doing this during a pre-rendered video clip, I can’t imagine it being better when the live event starts. But it needs to be.

5:40 – Make that quite a bit of lag, and this is only with 150K concurrent viewers. Hopefully this clears up for the actual presentation.

5:35 – The stream is now online if you feel like watching Sony’s trademark shapes spin around for the next 25 minutes. Noticing a bit of lag already.