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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."
Mr. Ed is Sony's new spokesperson?!?
Figures.
BTW, does this article remind anyone else of the Chief of Police scene in TMNT 2?
"Is there anything else you'd like to not tell me, Mr Kutaragi?"
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
They keep putting the wrong end up to the podium...
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...
Sure. Basically it comes down to frame rate and detail. A number of the heavier 360 games can't always maintain their frame rates and also don't look as good as the PS3 games. MotorStorm is a great example of this. It has incredible detail and great backgrounds as well as solid effects all around. And not a single frame lost that I could see. Not even when things got hairy. Everything pretty much looks like a cutscene...
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the 360. Realistically, if the games end up being better (in terms of gameplay and not graphics) on the 360 then that's the way to go. It's still early in and who knows how the platforms will develop, but as it stands, the PS3 appears to be the more technically advanced platform, but also for twice the price (clearly all the budget for which is not soley spent (squandered?) on the Blu-Ray drive).
On the sales front, ya, the 360 is dead in Japan. But to their credit MS is giving it the old college try. They had a huge booth and I heard they are planning to re-release (3rd time?) with a new Akira Toriyama (Mr. Dragonball) game, whose name escapes me at the moment (Dragon Quest Blue maybe).