Yesterday in San Francisco Sony held a Gamers' Day press event to show off some of the upcoming features and games of the PlayStation 3. The following is a timeline of what happened.
2:01 p.m.: Kaz Hirai, Jack Tretton, and Phil Harrison go through what comes in the box, launch titles, peripherals, the PlayStation Network, and the PlayStation Store, including downloadable content.
2:02 p.m.: They say they are going to try to show as much as possible in live demos during this session. After the presentation, attendees were able to get hands-on with the games.
2:03 p.m.: Hirai teases a surprise guest providing entertainment at the night's event.
2:04 p.m.: Hirai says the final boxed product is rolling off the assembly lines as we speak. Then he shows the retail packaging. He says they will have 22 launch-window titles, including games like FEAR, Call of Duty 3, Full Auto 2, Genji: Days of the Blade, NBA Live 07, NBA 2K7, NHL 2K7, Rainbow Six Vegas, Tony Hawk's Project 8, Untold Legends, and Ridge Racer 7.
2:05 p.m.: He talks about specific games, including Genji and NBA 07, which he touts by saying "there is no more realistic NBA action than NBA 07." Now he's turning to Resistance: Fall of Man. He calls it "the most robust lineup of any console launch for titles." A video montage plays.
2:11 p.m.: The video ends with the Play Beyond slogan and a round of applause from the crowd. Kaz talks about going deeper into what we'll find on launch day and introduces Jack Tretton.
2:12 p.m.: Tretton welcomes everyone to the event and says Sony is very excited for the big launch date. Now he's going to tell us what we'll find at retail on November 17. "A crowd." He recaps the two different PS3 packages and reiterates the previously announced US prices.
2:13 p.m.: He mentions the array of movie studios and tech companies supporting the Blu-ray format. He emphasizes that it does play DVD, CD, and Blu-ray video, so they're going to pack the Blu-ray edition of Talladega Nights in the first 500,000 PS3 systems.
2:14 p.m.: They play a trailer for Talledega Nights.
2:17 p.m.: Tretton says they worked closely with Sony Pictures to make the promotion happen and says "there can only be one number one because two number ones would be 11, and we don't want that." You could hear the crickets chirping with that one.
2:18 p.m.: Tretton brings up the Sixaxis controller, emphasizing that it doesn't require any outside sensors, and says we'll see some wonderful uses for it in the very near future. Also in the box is an AC cord (not a brick like the XBox 360), a USB minicable, an Ethernet cable, and a multi-AV cable with composite connector.
2:19 p.m.: First-party software will debut at $59.99 for Genji, Resistence, and NBA 07. The controller will be $49.99. Memory card adaptors will be $14.99, while the Blu-ray remote (in December) will be $24.99.
2:20 p.m.: Now it's time to talk demo kiosks. Sony will send out 15,000 kiosks that will debut October 26. They will feature Sony Bravia HD monitors. "Universally, PS products will have the lead-in position. They will have dominant shelf space," he says. He also says the kiosks will be networked so they can stream game demos, and they'll no longer be dependent on someone carrying a disc into the store and loading it up.
2:23 p.m.: Harrison says the team is in the home stretch and stresses how proud Sony is of what they're going to show us today. He introduces Insomniac Games' Ted Price to the stage to talk about Resistance and give a live demo.
2:24 p.m.: Price is showing Nottingham, England, after the alien invasion. He demonstrates some of the weapons, like the standard assault rifle, the bullseye (tag an enemy and then fire tracing bullets at him), or a temporary shield. He shows off the Lark, a rocket launcher weapon that can be paused in mid-flight and control its speed with the right analog stick or split up into a cluster of smaller rockets.
2:26 p.m.: He pauses the game and moves the camera around the frozen world in a debug mode. He fires a hedgehog, a spiky bomb that jumps into the air and shatters into shrapnel.
2:27 p.m.: The other thing he wants to mention is the game's online mode. He talks about the 40-player online mode, a first for a console launch title, a lobby with community features including buddy lists, clans, and stats. He asks everyone to check out the PS3 online with Resistence at launch and turns it back over to Phil Harrison.
2:28 p.m.: Harrison brings up Blu-ray again, talking about the ratio of disc-based storage to the system's main memory. He mentions that historically a balanced system has about 100:1.
2:29 p.m.: Now Harrison is talking us through a live demo of Genji. The main samurai slaughters enemy after enemy before switching out for a guy with a gigantic pole, Shizuka, and then back to the original samurai.
2:31 p.m.: Harrison ends the live demo and brings up high definition. He mentions that NBA Shootout was the first fully polygonal five-on-five sports game on the PlayStation and compares it to NBA 07 being the first sports game in 1080p resolution.
2:33 p.m.: He talks about the detail in the player faces and has the guy giving the live demo go into the instant-replay mode to show off the sweat on players in the middle of gameplay. He comments about being told the sweat bit is "cool".