PS3
First Party
Seb: While the PS3 is no longer hot news, Sony is determined to prove that their consoles have legs. First off, there’ll certainly be a lot of crowing about the fact that The Last of Us has seen epicly awesome reviews from across the board and is one of the highest rated games this gen on any platform, and we may even get another trailer.
Next up, unluckily for DriveClub, there will be Gran Turismo 6, the latest entry in Sony’s best selling IP. Expect more news, more cars and more trailers, although gamescom will probably be home to more GT announcements due to Europe’s love of the series.
Dan: Yeah, currently we are going to have to find out if Sony really meant it when they said that the PS3 will have a 10 year lifecycle, but given how this year is ending I don’t think anyone can really complain – except if you were looking forward to The Last Guardian.
SCE Japan Studio, while still getting a great deal of flak from The Last Guardian being the world’s biggest tease, has a line-up of games that WILL make it out to the public. Rain, a title developed by both Sony and Acquire, which I was able to see at GDC and got an interview with the game’s associate producer, Dais Kawaguchi, has been in development for a while, so I think it should be on the show floor in playable form. Also, Puppeteer, which unveiled alongside rain should make an appearance in a similar manner.
Second Party
Dan: The game that is currently working as the bookend for the PS3 generation is Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls – a title that started out as an emotional tech trailer with a living sexbot called Kara, but ended up being a psychological thriller involving everyone’s favorite actress Ellen Page.
As the game has been shown to a number of journalists over the last few months, but with an embargo date ending at 12am on the first day of E3, it means that we will more than likely be seeing the game on the show floor and possibly during the conference itself.
Seb: While Beyond is undoubtedly the biggest second party PS3 title, there are still even more games set to come out this year. Supermassive Games, who we mentioned in our PS4 section, have the upcoming horror adventure title Until Dawn in development as a PS Move game, which actually uses the Killzone 2 engine. On top of that, they have Wonderbook’s Walking with Dinosaurs, but Sony’ll probably let it down with zero marketing. I expect both games to be at E3, but only Until Dawn has any real chance at being in the press conference, and even that is unlikely.
We probably won’t see much outside of that – Sanzaru Games, best known for Sly Cooper Thieves in Time, are hiring for a new PS3/Wii game according to a job listing we’ve uncovered, so I can’t see being at Sony’s booth. And then there’s the indie games like Hohokum and Doki-Doki Universe which are also coming to the PS4 and Vita.
Console Overview: Hardware, price, features and more
Seb: Obviously, the PS3 won’t get much in the way of hardware news as the PS4 takes center stage. There may, however, be a $50 price cut either at E3 or gamescom. The console could do with a lower price, especially as the 360 is likely to drop as well, and it’d allow the PS3 to continue on strong with all its awesome upcoming games. We’ll also probably hear about PS3 sales, with Sony telling us about how successful the PS3 has been this generation.
Dan: Yeah, the PS3 will see a price drop, Sony cannot miss this opportunity to get consumers to pick up a console before the retail space starts to be taken over with next-gen units. But, as more consumers should be picking up PS3s, Sony will have to show those consumers just what they are missing with the PS4.
The best way to do this would be to actually cross-integrate communication between consoles, and allow people to have their friends rant on about how cool the PS4 is. This would also mean that there would be a need to expand the friends list capacity. Short of the price cut, though, I really think the Sony conference will be PS4 geared with a small segment showing off PS3 titles, along with the price drop, and, of course, the Vita.
Finally, head on over to the next page for Vita coverage….
