Sony today revealed a huge range of software announcements, including four all-new titles – Tearaway, Puppeteer, Until Dawn and Rain – at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany.
Showing a clear commitment to delivering gamers fresh new experiences, the conference featured a non-stop series of announcements for new games across both PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) and PlayStation 3 (PS3). As promised by Jim Ryan, President and CEO of SCEE, at the opening of the presentation: “you are all here tonight, to see the next wave of innovation and creativity.”
SCEE also reinforced a strong commitment to PlayStation Move (PS Move), in particular the upcoming Wonderbook. As well as showcasing new title Wonderbook: Diggs Nightcrawler, it was revealed that Disney and BBC Worldwide will soon be bringing amazing content to this revolutionary peripheral.
Away from software the drive behind PlayStation Plus (PS Plus), evident at E3, continued apace with the announcement that PS Vita will soon be included in the programme. New developments came too from PlayStation Mobile – now set to deliver PlayStation-Certified content including games to an even greater number of devices including devices from newly announced hardware partners ASUS and Wikipad.
PlayStation’s enthusiasm was matched by that of major third party publishers. Activision gave the world its first glimpse of PS Vita exclusive title Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified and Ubisoft Entertainment shared yet more news for the hugely-anticipated Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation.
PlayStation Gamescom Conference 2012 – In Summary:
BRAND NEW TITLES
LittleBigPlanet studio Media Molecule reveal their next title – Tearaway for PS Vita
SCE Worldwide Studios Japan Studio showcase Puppeteer, a strange and fantastic platformer
Also from SCE WWS Japan Studio comes a dark fairytale for PlayStation Network, Rain
Until Dawn will bring the best of a teen horror film to PlayStation Move
PlayStation Vita
Ratchet & Clank: QForce from Insomniac Games confirmed for PS Vita
Cross-buy announced for PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, Ratchet & Clank: QForce, and Sly Cooper Thieves in Time
Over 100 PS One classics coming to PS Vita
All-new Killzone title coming to PS Vita – Killzone Mercenary
All new hardware bundles including LittleBigPlanet PlayStation Vita and PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale
PlayStation 3
Academy Award - winning Moonbot Studios Wonderbook title Diggs Nightcrawler showcased
BBC Worldwide and Disney announced as partners for Wonderbook
SERVICES
PS Plus coming to PS Vita
A range of new partners sign up to produce content from PlayStation Mobile
ASUS and WikiPad confirmed as new hardware partners for PlayStation Mobile.
THIRD PARTY TITLES
First glimpse of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, which will be available in a bundle with PS Vita
Other confirmed third party titles that will be bundled with PS Vita include FIFA 13 from EA Sports, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation from Ubisoft Entertainment, Need for Speed:Most Wanted from Electronic Arts and LEGO The Lord of the Rings from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
Electronic Arts showcase PS Move functionality of FIFA 13
PlayStation Gamescom conference 2012 – Announcements in full:
BRAND NEW TITLE
Alex Evans of Media Molecule, the studio behind LittleBigPlanet, took to the Gamescom stage to reveal the next completely fresh title from the UK-based team – Tearaway for PS Vita.
Tearaway takes players on an adventure through a vibrant papery world with your new friend Iota, a plucky messenger with a unique message to deliver—to you! This paper world is small enough to hold in your own two hands, allowing you to reach into the game with your God-like powers and help Iota complete this very special delivery.
Turning to fresh titles for PS Move, SCEE unveiled Until Dawn. Developed by Supermassive Games, this title features all the elements you’d expect from your favourite teen horror film: a script that’s funny, sexy, and scary, a beautiful young cast, an isolated location, a devious killer, a dark secret and an all-important twist. Until Dawn will make the PlayStation Move motion controller your torch, guiding players through the dark as they attempt you survive…Until Dawn.
New announcements continued with Rain, created by SCE WWS Japan Studio, this PSN title is a dark fairytale featuring invisible boy and girl protagonists who can only be seen by their silhouettes in the falling rain.
Gavin Moore of SCE WWS Japan Studio came before the audience to reveal yet another new title from SCE WWS Japan Studio – Puppeteer.
Set in a magical puppeteer’s theatre, this title will introduce players to a strange and fantastic world, where the environment is constantly changing. This is a rich fairytale where surprises lurk around every corner.
PlayStation VITA
Launched six months ago in Europe and PAL territories, PS Vita arrived with the strongest line-up of games ever seen for a new platform. Looking ahead to the holiday season, Jim Ryan revealed a series of announcements that will make PS Vita a must-have this Christmas.
Cross-Controller DLC for LittleBigPlanet 2 for PS3 was revealed, an innovation that will see players Play, Create, and Share together as never before. For the first time players will be able to use PS Vita as an advanced controller and secondary screen for LittleBigPlanet 2, allowing a host of new single and multiplayer game play features.
With dual-screen gaming players will be able to see the action from the different viewpoints of PS3 and PS Vita, use the touch and tilt functions of PS Vita to move platforms and objects on PS3, and even jump into wormholes to propel Sackboy between consoles. Tools will also be provided for players to make their own Cross-Controller games and share them for everyone else to play and enjoy.
Moving on to mash-up brawler PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale - launching November 2012 - four new characters were showcased: Sackboy, Dante from Devil May Cry, Spike from Ape Escape, and Ratchet will all be playable in this hotly-anticipated game. The title will also showcase a number of PS3 compatibility functions:
Cross-Play allows players to get stuck into the action with up to three friends, enjoying the same hi-definition online experience regardless of whether playing on PS Vita or PS3.
Cross-Save gives gamers the freedom to save their progress on PS3, and pick up on-the-move with PS Vita, or vice versa.
Finally Cross-Buy enables owners of PS3 and PS Vita to purchase a game for one platform and play on another for free, or at a discount. With game experiences being near identical across PS3 and PS Vita Cross-Buy delivers unmatched value for money. Ratchet & Clank: QForce and Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (released March 2013) will also support Cross-Buy.
Looking to downloadable products, Jim Ryan revealed that from August 28th, over 100 PS One classics including Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil 2 will be available to download for PS Vita.
Concluding on the portable entertainment system, Jim Ryan unveiled Killzone: Mercenary for PS Vita. A completely new Killzone experience, with all the all-out action and stunning visuals gamers have come to expect.
Killzone: Mercenary throws you into a deadly firefight where you not only fight alongside the dangerous ISA, but also shoulder to shoulder with the vicious Helghast. There is no good, no evil, only the mission…and the money.
PlayStation 3
For the home entertainment system, SCEE drove home an exciting line up for the festive season including PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, LittleBigPlanet Karting, Ratchet & Clank: QForce, DanceStar Party Hits, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 from Activision FIFA 13 from EA Sports and Assassin’s Creed III from Ubisoft Entertainment – a title that will include free DLC at launch boasting four PS3-exclusive missions.
Sports Champions 2 is also part of this line up, and will be launching 1st November in Spain, Portugal & New Zealand, 2nd November in UK & Ireland, and 31st October throughout the rest of the PAL region.
Also announced was the launch of the Essentials range of titles for PS3. Much like the successful range of PSP (PlayStation Portable) titles, PS3 Essentials will offer a wide range of high quality games all for €19.99. Titles available in the range include Uncharted: Drakes Deception, God of War III and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
Wonderbook made its debut at E3, and PlayStation revealed more about this revolutionary peripheral at Gamescom. Michael Denny, President of SCE Worldwide Studios Europe explained PlayStation’s vision for the product: “Wonderbook takes the simple concept of a storybook and creates a multi-dimensional experience that brings stories to life right in your living room.”
“Using augmented reality technology via PlayStation Eye, Wonderbook allows you to explore and interact with a story in ways that children have only dreamed of.”
Moving to specific titles, the Gamescom audience was given its first taste of Diggs Nightcrawler, a stylish new detective story from the Academy Award-winning Moonbot Studios, an incredibly talented team famous for their short videos and interactive books.
In the story, players will partner up with Diggs Nightcrawler, a bookworm detective, in his quest to solve the mysterious crimes of Library City. Wonderbook will allow players to manipulate the world and discover surprises around every corner and over every page.
Wonderbook will launch with Book of Spells, featuring original writing from J.K. Rowling, and at Gamescom Michal Denny announced two equally prestigious partners: BBC Worldwide and their amazing Walking With Dinosaurs, and Disney who will bring some of their most famous brands to life through Wonderbook.
SERVICES
“PlayStation Plus is an area of our business that we are putting a great deal of focus on.” Jim Ryan told the Gamescom audience.
Putting this into action, it was announced that the size of cloud storage available on PS Plus will be increased to 1GB for PS3 users – over six times larger than the current allowance. The additional space will be welcomed by gamers keen to take advantage of the Instant Games Collection announced by PlayStation at E3. Top quality games are already being made available for members to download as part of their subscription and the standard will be set in September when the stunning Red Dead Redemption will join the selection of available games.
Finally, it was revealed that PS Plus will soon be available via PS Vita.
During Gamescom, consumers will have a chance to get a hands on with a number of brand new titles soon to be available as part for PlayStation Plus. Including SEGA and Arkedo’s Hell Yeah! which is confirmed as October’s Game of the Month. Consumers will also have a chance to sample a selection of PlayStation Plus Presents independently developed titles, with 24 Caret Games’ Retro/Grade, and RipStone’s Big Sky Infinity and Knytt Underground available to play on the show floor.
Launching this autumn, PlayStation Mobile offers snack-sized games across a variety of ‘PlayStation-Certified’ devices. With user friendly development tools, publishers and bedroom developers alike can now offer unique and creative games to the PlayStation community.
At the heart of PlayStation Mobile are the games and Jim Ryan told the assembled crowds that “Nobody does games better than PlayStation and the games curated through PlayStation Mobile are no exception.”
PlayStation Mobile will offer a wide range of portable gaming experiences utilising the exceptional creativity of existing publishers combined with new ideas from the emerging development talent of the gaming world. Just some of the titles heading to PlayStation Mobile include: Super Crate Box, Aqua Kitty, Samurai Beatdown, Passing Time, BeatSlider and Flick Hockey.
THIRD PARTY TITLES
This was a presentation all about content and software, and third parties showed major commitment to both PS3 and PS Vita
A live demo of Ubisoft Entertainment’s Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation showed an action adventure experience like no other, built from the ground-up for PS Vita.
EA Sports showcased how FIFA 13 is the latest title to make the most of PS Move, the upcoming version of the world’s most successful football game will be PS Move enabled.
Finally Activision Publishing’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified will put gaming’s leading first-person multiplayer shooter into the palm of gamer’s hands and at Gamescom, a hardware bundle was announced that will include a PS Vita with a limited edition customised Call of Duty back panel and a Call of Duty pouch.
Declassified features intense 4v4 multiplayer action complete with the hallmark Call of Duty gameplay, including Care Packages, Create-a-Class, Killstreaks, Perks, and even Prestiging. Delivering a brand-new storyline set within the Call of Duty: Black Ops universe, Declassified also offers an exciting series of single player operations. Added touchscreen and “near” features will make the most of PS Vita’s astonishing feature set.
