If there's one thing that Sony appears to be doing extremely well this year, it's shows. Having thoroughly impressed at
GDC, the company's E3 keynote - which followed
Nintendo's - certainly suggests that its development strategy is looking solid.
We've already pointed out the newest addition to the PSP family in an earlier story (read that,
here), so now we'll move onto the matters of exclusivity.
When it comes down to it - while the world waits for
Home - the general grumbling has been about a lack of games for PS3. and especially about the lack of exclusives. Well, the company appears to be well aware of this as hit the waiting crowd with several third-party titles, and the end of an era.
Starting at the end and with the very end of the
Metal Gear Solid franchise. Breaking hearts or mending brains,
MGS director Hideo Kojima showed a video trailer of the confirmed PS3 exclusive that is
Metal Gear Solid 4 and then dropped the bomb (again) that it would be his last involvement with the series. In short, this is the last one folks. We'll all have to wait until the 17th of this month to get an actual hands-on by the way. But what do we love to hear - aside from the fact that all MGS secrets will be laid bare? We love to hear the phrase, "Simultaneous worldwide launch". At last, we Europeans won't have to look all enviously at our cousins across the pond when the game goes live 'early in 2008'.
Also up for exclusivity is MMO maker NCSoft - home of Richard Garriot's
Tabula Rasa among others. While no product from the stable was mentioned specifically as exclusive to PS2, PS3 or PSP, it was made clear that the publisher of
Guild Wars,
City of Heroes and
Lineage would be MMO'ing for Sony only when it comes to consoles.
As expected, one of SPOnG's most anticipated games of the year, Ubisoft's
Haze was also marked with a 'PS3-Only' stamp, at least for this year.
Epic was next in line with the announcement that not only will its Unreal Engine be optimised for consoles, but that
Unreal Tournament itself would get the PS3 exclusive brand for this year.
Stay tuned for more E3 updates (Sony and more!) from our man on the spot.