E3 2008: Sony Reflects On E3 Press Conference

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E3 is just about over, and Sony's press conference has come and gone. We watched with interest and anticipation, and although we weren't blown away, we were relatively happy with the presentation. Sony did many things right, and getting looks at games like Resistance 2, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet and M.A.G certainly helped. But how did Sony view their own efforts?

Well, 1Up got to sit down with Sony vice-president Scott Rohde, and quickly asked how they thought everyone reacted to the press conference. Rhode's answer was simple-

"I think the reaction has been even better than we expected. Everyone's been very, very happy. We went in announcing that this was the year of the PlayStation, and we showed tons of breadth and depth. We showed a bunch of new titles and everything."

Of course, it was essential that at some point, the issue of losing Final Fantasy XIII had to come up, just because it appeared to be the biggest news of E3 2008. However, if you got the chance to watch the press conference, you realized just how many exclusives Sony has planned. Rohde reemphasized this major point with a couple significant comments, posted here:

"Part of the strength of Sony's structure is that our worldwide studios organization is huge. We have tons of gigantic worldwide developers, so we have tons of products. That's why Jack Tretton was able to stand there and say we have more exclusives than anybody else, because it's absolutely true. We're building a lot of them ourselves. So, of course, in this press conference we want to push our own homegrown titles, like LittleBigPlanet and Resistance 2."

And:

"...you've got 23 exclusives already on the PS3 from a first-party perspective. If Microsoft wants to back up the dump truck full of money, there's not a whole lot that can be done there. Certainly, Final Fantasy XIII is still coming on PS3, so it's not like it's not on your system anymore. It's being developed first for the PS3, so your experience is probably going to be better on the PS3 than it will be on the 360. I haven't seen it or played it; [this is] just based on what I've been told. It's definitely a win for the 360 owner, and Microsoft should be applauded for that, but it's not a loss for us. It's not like the title is not coming out on the PlayStation 3. It is."

Rohde finished by saying we should "stand by for the Tokyo Game Show," which comes up in September. It seems Sony isn't done with the big announcements this year, as he said "there are still other products that need time to incubate before they're announced." For our part, despite the loss of FFXIII as an exclusive, we do have to agree that Sony's current exclusive lineup is pretty darn impressive. Wouldn't you agree as well?

7/18/2008 Ben Dutka

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