(Image courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk)

As I mentioned in my Wii press conference report Sony also had the job of trying to top Microsoft, especially as they are currently third in the market. Thankfully Sony did an excellent job, with some new exclusives and new hardware to boot. Read on for the full story.

Jack Tretton kicked off the press conference by announcing that an impressive 364 games will be coming to Playstation platforms this year. He also mentioned that Sony is dedicated to continued support of the Playstation 2 even after its ten year anniversary passes. It’s nice to see Sony still supporting the PS2, considering it’s still a console that’s in millions of homes worldwide.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune 2 was the first game to be shown, making sure that Sony started on a spectacular note. The visuals are looking stunning, with humongous draw details to boot. The action that made the first game so fun to play is also very intact; with Drake running along rooftops, sliding down zipwires, using everything as cover all while evading a persistent helicopter that likes to shoot machine gun rounds and missiles. The demo ends with the helicopter taking out the building Drake and his companion are in, with the two characters sliding through rooms as the building slowly topples, before finally leaping out into an adjacent building.

Next up was MAG, which was determined to show why it earned the title ‘Massive Action Game’. Sony pulled off a live demonstration of 256 players playing simultaneously while the audience looked on. The emphasis was on the tactical action, with players securing a forward base to allow their main command to move up and establish themselves further up the map.

Kaz Hirai then came on to show us the PSP Go, getting one out of his pocket and showing it to the audience. I’ve already covered the PSP Go’s features so I won’t get into too much detail, but it’s 50% smaller and 40% lighter than the PSP 3000. Sony will also be releasing software called ‘Media Go’ which will help users manage their PSP’s content on their PC. Another feature called ‘Sense Me’ also promises to analyse your music library to play music based on the mood of your choice. Finally, the price will be $249.99/€249.99 (there’s no word on whether it will be the same for pounds or not) and will be released on 1st October.

A surprising announcement was Gran Turismo for the PSP. It’s a fully fledged Gran Turismo game that will apparently run at 60 fps and boasts 800 cars and 35 tracks. You can also swap cars from your garages with other PSP users, and its release will coincide with the PSP Go’s release on 1st October.

Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker for the PSP was announced next, which takes place 10 years after Metal Gear Solid 3. The visuals are looking really nice for a PSP game, and stealth seems to play more of a part than ever before.

Also announced was a Resident Evil game for the PSP, although that’s all the information we’ve got right now.

Finally for the PSP announcements Final Fantasy VII (as I already posted about) will hit US PSN stores for the PS3 and PSP at midnight tonight. However, there’s no word on a European release as of yet.

Sony also briefly mentioned Rockstar North’s PS3 exclusive Agent, which takes place in the 1970’s. Um, that’s pretty much it.

Gameplay footage from Assassin’s Creed II showed why Ubisoft neglected to show any in their utterly boring press conference yesterday. We already know the setting, so we saw Ezio walking through dancing crowds at the Venice Carnival. Ezio used the famous flying machine invented by Da Vinci, swooping over the canals of Venice, and also pulled a jaw-dropping two-fisted assassination on two guards. It’s looking pretty good at the moment, but we still don’t know if there’s more variety to the missions than the first game.

New gameplay footage of Final Fantasy XIII was shown, with the English voice acting already done. Tretton then announced one of the most surprising things I’ve heard all week. A Final Fantasy XIV trailer was shown, something I didn’t expect to happen for at least another year. The game will be PS3 exclusive and the ‘online’ part of the announcement alludes to the game being an MMO like Final Fantasy XI.

Now it was time for Sony to show off their previously rumoured attempt at motion control. This now means that all three big players will offer some form of motion control.

Sony’s attempt is currently still in the prototype stage, so the two wireless wands are little more than a stick with a ball attached. It’s clear that Sony is attempting to better the Wii’s Motion Plus, with a tech demo showing that the technology has incredible precision. The wands can turn into a virtual representation of anything on screen, the demonstrator switching between tennis racquets, swords, guns, flashlights and even stop signs. The most impressive parts were writing with the wands and using it as a bow, pretending to pull a bow from an imaginary quiver on his back to rearm himself.

While the technology on display was impressive Nintendo has own thing going for it that Microsoft and Sony don’t – they had motion controls from launch. Wii was built on the idea of motion control, enabling developers to support it from launch because they knew that everyone who owned a Wii also had access to motion controls. Are developers really willing to risk releasing a game with only motion controls when most of the console base may not even own the perhipials that are needed to play such a game? It’s more likely that the motion controls will be an afterthought tacked onto games that are built with standard controllers in mind. It’s all about money in the end, and a company would be more likely to go for the safe bet of the Wii then risk losing sales because people didn’t own the controllers their game required.

A game called ModNation Racers came next, a kart racer that was inspired by the ‘play create share’ genre that was apparently created by LittleBigPlanet. You can design cars, racers and even tracks and then upload them for others in the PSN community. The track editor was demonstrated, which was looking both simple to use and incredibly detailed (sort of like the Far Cry 2 map editor). In only five minutes the demonstrator had created a small track running through hills and rocky terrain; with trees and villages placed around the track and even sheep milling around. The creation tools for the game are great, but will it actually be fun to play?

Next was The Last Guardian from Team ICO. The video for this had already been leaked in the form of Trico, but the trailer on show was an updated version of this. It looks beautiful, following the story of a boy and his, um, big pet cat thing? I’m not actually sure what it is, so you’ll have to check out the video yourself. Basically the game looks like a cross between Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

Gran Turismo 5 then made a sudden appearance, but only in the form of another trailer. The graphics are looking spectacular, but the game really needs to be released sometime soon.

Finally a God of War III demo was shown, which was more than epic. We saw Kratos ripping through hordes of enemies; send them flying around the level. He also used harpies to reach higher locations, grabbing onto them and doing an uppercut with his sword to make them fly higher. The best part was when he gutted a centaur with a gigantic lava titan watching in the distance. It’s good to see that the gore will splatter more than ever, and a 20 minute demo at E3 will mean we’ll get some impressions as E3 continues. The game itself will be released in March 2010.

Overall Sony’s press conference was fairly entertaining, with some great exclusives and an intriguing motion control system. However, when it comes to summing up all three major press conferences I have to hand it to Microsoft. Project Natal is looking awesome and all the upgrades coming to Xbox Live and, of course, the exclusive games are making me wish everything would be released this week. I’m wrong of course, because then we would have nothing to look forward to.

This post concludes ButtonSmasher’s E309’s press conference coverage, but keep checking back throughout the week for more news and impressions coming out of the world’s biggest video games show.