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Sony's pre-show was true to usual form. There was a lot of talk about past, current, and future revenue, broadband capabilities, and market superiority. This press conference felt more like a pitch to a group of investors than an intro to E3. Case in point, when outlining Sony's priorities for the coming year, increasing profit was given more importance than increasing depth of software. Even so, Sony did outline a few of their upcoming titles, specifically Ratchet and Clank, SOCOM, The Getaway, and Madden 2003.
Ratchet and Clank was by far the most intriguing title presented, proposing high depth of game play and 35 selectable weapons. Dark Chronicle was visually appealing, but as it was relegated to the composite cinema, not much of the actual game was shown. Madden 2003 was clearly the focus of the event, and to this end Sony pitted two NFL players, Dante Culpepper and Jevon Kearse against each other in an online competition. We have the Madden 2003 event in its entirety here for your downloading pleasure. The stuttering that you see in the video was indeed seen by all present and is somewhat disappointing. It is indeed a pleasure to see John Madden himself pop onscreen to provide color commentary for the game. Madden is indeed a crazy, crazy man. You'll see what I mean when you reach the part about the 'optafraculon'. One of the more interesting things was the presence of a trailer for Resident Evil Online...a franchise supposedly exclusive to the GameCube.
Otherwise it seems as though it's business as usual for Sony; maintain current leadership status while expanding the user-base. Their stance on broadband hasn't changed either. They seem committed to the model of publishers determining their own online costs. Whether or not Sony will take a piece of these fees is not yet clear, but I would imagine that to be the case, since it was not specifically mentioned. All in all it was a dry presentation, but it got the job done. We know Sony is the market leader in home consoles, and we know they won't be toppled from that post any time soon, but one can't help but be disappointed by Kaz Hirai's final thought, asking the audience to choose either the tried and true or the experimental.
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Media for download
Intro: This contains clips of several upcoming PS2 games including, but not limited to...
Ratchet and Clank: This game looks promising…lots of stuff to do and environments to explore. Check it out.
The Getaway: Really ambitious game combining driving (a la Driver) and action (a la Max Payne) set in crime-filled London. Utilizing real actors (2) and motion capture, they even have a live-action trailer made to draw in the movie crowd.
SOCOM US Navy SEALs: Rather average looking online fps. This clip shows the game pretty well, but probably not as much action as one would like in a demo.
Madden 2003: Ridiculously humorous footage of John Madden being a loon. And there's some game in there too I think.
Resident Evil Online: Well...here's the footage. Looks interesting. Now I just want to know what Nintendo means by exclusivity...
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