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More PS3 Words From the Horse's Mouth
Game|Life had the chance to sit down with Ken Kutaragi, Phil Harrison, and Kaz Hirai; Chris Kohler has some details on things left unsaid at the PS3 conference. From the article: "Q: You're the head of Sony's worldwide development studios. What the hell is up with that Africa game? A: Video games have a function in life, and that is: wish fulfillment. You can become a mercenary, a fighter pilot. On PS3, we can expand the realm of that experience. Africa allows you to experience a very interesting part of the world, a safari in the plains of Africa. The gameplay is entirely non-violent. You don't kill the animals. It emphasizes the positives rather than the negatives. It's about collecting experiences and keeping them for posterity."
I was at TGS today and saw a whack of HD demos at the Sony booth. You're right in terms of looking good. Afrika looked great. In fact it was one of the best games there. Another really impressive one was Shirokishi and Motorstorm looks to be a contender for nicest overall presentation. Devil May Cry 4 didn't look too hot and there were a lot of forgettable demos, although Mina no Golf looked like a lot of fun with solid production values.
What was *not* cool was MGS4. It was a major letdown. Yes, it was nicely presented in the same way one might put tripe into a fancy gift box. The in-game graphic quality has dropped down a sizable notch from previous demos. And the animation... Everything was very robotic and very unnatural; totally unlike the two previous movies.
For example, firing a gun has literally two key frames. Normal position and recoiled position. There weren't even any in-between frames. He just fired his gun, snapping forward and back jerkily between the two positions. Not smooth or natural at all. It was a big, big, letdown.
A lot of games were available to play, but MGS4 (unsurprisingly given the movie) did not appear to be among them. Speaking of missing games, there was not even so much as a whiff of Assassin's Creed, which was really too bad as I was looking forward to seeing it. Maybe tomorrow...
But the ***HUGE*** loser of the day was the PS3's new Coded Arms game. They have really, really screwed it up. I was watching it for some time in quite some disbelief as I literally saw framerates drop below 5 per second. Like maybe 1 per second. Really. And that kind of stuttering was pretty regular. An unmitigated disaster by all appearances. I'm really hoping I'm mistaken and this is some low budget PS2 version.
Overall, the PS3 beats out the XBox 360 on all accounts. What the XBox struggles to do, the PS3 does easily. Not only was that my impression, but also the opinion of all of the industry folk I spoke to.
Enough to save them? Only time will tell...
From the article:
"Will the PS3 include component video cables in the box?
I'm not sure, but I think the answer might be "no."
We know it doesn't come with HDMI cables. So how do you connect it to your TV? Is it really composite only? That's remarkable. So out of the box, it will look like poo no matter what television you have.
They are adding HDMI to all the PS3s now, but they aren't including a decent cable to connect with. Strange.