Sony, bastion of originality....

So, In all the anticipation of Nintendo's conference in a little under 10 hours, I totally forgot that Sony also had a big press conference today. Here is their official deisgn for the PS3, with their "newly redesigned" controller:








Looks sorta familiar, don't it? Well, aside from being wireless (also another original idea...) the big difference is that they have basically stolen Nintendo's main gimmick and supposedly added motion-sensing capablities to the controller, though my guess is it won't bey a key component of any noteworthy titles, and therefore limited to being a nifty gimmick that's never utilized.

And suprisingly they announced the prices. Two prices to be exact (again, does this sound familiar?). $500 for the shitty model with a 20 gig hardrive. $600 for the slightly less shitty model with a bigger hardrive. Well the only fucked up this idea twice as bad as MS did. But Sony's lower-priced model is even more cut off than MS' was. I really think Sony is pushing the limits of what people will spend on a gaming machine (that's right, IT'S A FUCKING GAMING MACHINE, GET USED TO IT!).

They mentioned some online details, but it was honestly very vague stuff, aside from saying they wanted to create an integral online community or something to that effect. No details on pricing of any sort (which means it most likely won't be free).

Finally, Sony did throw out several trailers that were suppossed to impress: 8 Days, Heavenly Sword, and Resistance. I admit 8 days looked impresively graphically, but the other trailers were extremely underwhelming in my view. This was pretty much my fear. These all look simply like prettier versions of games we already play. Not any new ways to play them.

SquareEnix also had a press conference today. Their big news was a brief trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, which will be exclusive to the PS3, but honestly, as big an FF fan as I am, I was severely unimpressed by the static designs and obviously prer-renedered animations that would be quite simple for an rpg to pull off with its traditionally limited interaction. I was much more enthused about SE announcing a Dragon Quest game for the Wii (hell, I'm over it, but I hold out a little hope that they'll say it was a joke tommorow) that will be available AT LAUNCH. Nintendo's system is just sounding better and better.