A light-hearted look at Sony's E3 conference...

After a short delay while Sony recovered their presentation from hackers, the conference began at shortly before half past one. Jack Tretton was first on stage and spoke about an elephant in the room; there’s a joke to be made there about certain game developers but I’m not going to make it and you’re a terrible person for thinking it. He began with an apology about the recent PSN outages without mentioning the word “hacking” and it was very tastefully done. There was a small joke at the media’s expense but mostly it was treated with the utmost seriousness, which was good to see.



Unfortunately, slightly less tasteful was his shirt and tie combo. A peach shirt with a blue tie? Good grief.

In a long speech he kept talking about Kinecting your Kinected devices and how you could Kinect with your friends. He later mentioned that he liked his job but it doesn’t appear that he knows which company he works for.

Then, of course, Sony started with Uncharted 3. In it, we watched Drake take part in some badly handed gunplay while traversing through a heavily-scripted platform section. More of the same, it looked incredible, of course, with some of the best lighting ever seen in a videogame – I’d say it’s difficult to hide a bad game behind good graphics but look how successful Uncharted 2 was. We saw Drake trying to escape a boat that was flooding. Yes, like that game you played in 1990. And 1991. And 1992. And 1993. And there’s no originality left in gaming.

In an odd move, you’ll be able to get a playable demo when you buy a sandwich from Subway. I can’t wait to get a demo of Resistance 3 when I buy a stamp at the Post Office. Getting some beer from the off licence? Here, have a go of Ico.

Resistance 3 was the next game but as soon as the footage started I zoned out. It was late. I’m still fairly confident that I can describe it with great accuracy, though, so here goes. Loads of explosions, probably a few aliens including a really big one, loads of grey and brown, and probably some team-mates shouting manly things like “MOVE! MOVE!” There’s no originality left in gaming.

The highlight of the night was reserved for a PlayStation branded TV, which is to make 3D gaming more accessible by putting a $500 price tag on it, which is about what a 3D TV costs anyway. There’s some real genius at work here, though, because it uses the tech to display two full screen images at the same time to two players wearing 3D glasses. It’s split-screen gaming without the split-screen and is the future.

NBA2k12 or NBA2k13 or something was next, and they had Kobe Bryant on stage to demo it. LOCK UP YOUR [removed by lawyers]. He began by making some basketball jokes which I understand to be hilarious from the audience’s whooping, but, well, it was a joke about basketball. There was then a short argument which ended with Kobe saying “give me the remote.” What he should have said, of course, was “give me the Move controller and the Move Navigation controller.” I hope he managed to get the rest of his script right where he talked about how realistic the game was and something called triangle attack. To be fair, it did look like real footage of a basketball match. The new move mode of the game is just the way you’ve been playing Pro Evo (a proper sport) on Wii for years. There’s no originality left in gaming.

We were well in to the Wii stuff, sorry, Move stuff now. Wii Sports Medieval, sorry, Medieval Moves has “Move” in the title, and therefore it was a bunch of minigames with a medieval theme. Because when I read about medieval history I always like the bits about how archers shoot at targets to open doors the best. If stealing the Wii’s games wasn’t bad enough, in true Kinect fashion the game was on-rails. There’s no originality left in gaming. Nice job, Jeremy.

inFAMOUS 2 was next. inFAMOUS 2 is out already, so they moved onto Starhawk. Angry black protagonist and space and guns and stuff. There’s no originality left in gaming.

The highlight of the evening as games go was a trailer for a new Sly Cooper game. Of course, it’s easy to make a trailer but if they can get the game looking half as stylish, no, entirely as stylish as the trailer did, it will look incredible.

There was then the reveal of the 114th game this year to be titled “Dust.” There’s no originality left in gaming.

There then followed a quite amazing trailer. It started off with a woman with a quite amazing rack. Then there was an action-packed steampunk-styled really colourful sequence that looked amazing. What is this? WHAT IS IT! Turned out that it was BioDust Infinite. BioShock. BioShock Infinite. There were enough uses of "amazing" there.

A Star Trek game was then shown to the people in the audience above the age of 35, and then there was about ten minutes of Tretton naming every game under the sun and talking about what exclusive modes were coming to the PlayStation versions. “BUY OUR STUFF. I BEG YOU.” He announced Kaz Hirai, and we were moving on.

Hirai announced PlayStation Suite, which has been out for months already. He then, in a move that shocked literally the entire world, revealed that the name of the PS Vita was to be PS Vita. He announced that it would be available exclusively through AT&T in the US to a chorus of groans. Good move. Then it was games time.

Uncharted was Uncharted with touch screen controls. It was demoed by two larger fellows with more heavy breathing than a Tomb Raider demo. Modnation Racers was Modnation Racers with touch screen controls. LittleBigPlanet was LittleBigPlanet with touch screen controls. There’s no originality left in gaming.

There was more heavy breathing with the reveal of Ruin, a loot-whore game which as its primary feature, allows you to save the game on the PS Vita and continue playing on the PC. No! PlayStation 3! He meant PlayStation 3! You have to buy two copies of the game, of course, so you’d have to be insane to take advantage of this.

We went back to the PS Vita guy (Robot Hands) who applauded while addressing the audience with “we’re very proud to show you the crap.”

The final reveal of the night came in the form of Street Fighter Cross Tekken, or SFxTK as it’s known. It has the bloke from inFAMOUS in it, and therefore really needs to be known as SFxTKxIN which looks like something a swear filter would come up with. There’s no originality left in fighting games. “We’ve got no new ideas! Let’s just combine some old ones! The idiots will lap it up!”

PS Vita’s price closed the conference; it will be available for $249, €249 or £799.