I didn't bring the laptop so we couldn't live blog like the cool guys at Engadget (who were two rows in front of us) but here are our notes from the press conference today. We mostly focused on the PS3 stuff but there was some other cool stuff that they had to show off today. Here are my notes from the show:
- Sony brought out Joshua Bell (#1 hit on the classical music charts...) to perform one of his hit songs. I start checking my e-mail, the guy in front of me checks fires up ESPN.com to check out the score of the game.
- Sony's big theme for 2007 is Transformations (which lead to the obvious Sony: More than meets the eye joke). Their idea is to bring together their various elements like video games, electronics, media, and TV's together. Sony is the only company that has the assets to pull this kind of thing together.
- PS3 Update:
- Sold 1M units by the end of the year, meeting their goal (I believe this is more units than MS had on shelves last year)
- Fastest selling console for Sony, faster than both the PS and PS2 (which sold 110M more units world wide)
- Sony is looking to ship more than 6 million units by the end of March
- Three trends in gaming right now
- HD (duh)
- Portable entertainment - no more digital living room, digital living
- Online Community
- Sony takes easy cheap shot at MS for charging yearly fee for their service
- Sony will soon be allowing people to stream content from their PS3 to their PSP anywhere they can get online (I think we've heard this before.)
- Some talk about user developed content but no real details on this
- Game montage of titles, a little bit of Lair, MotorStorm, Rainbow 6:Vegas, FEAR, and a few other titles - no real new footage here
- Flow is expected out later this month
- Sony is introducing a new 70" Bravia, time to start selling plasma
- Sony showed off their new OLED TV's...just jaw dropping beautiful. John talked to one of the reps after the press conference and Sony is at least 2 years away from releasing the small versions of these TV's.
- Sony also showed off the new plug in module for their new Bravia TV's that will allow owners to stream HD media to their TV's without streaming it through their PC (take that MS).
- Will have content provided by AOL, Yahoo, and Grouper (although hopefully something better than their weird sneezing woman clip they showed tonight)
- Content will be free
- The first TV's should ship in Spring 2007
- Content will be free
- User interface for the system will be the XMB interface used on the PSP and PS3
- Did we mention the content will be free?
- Will support RSS feeds so you can get personalized data - Hopefully the PS3 gets this soon...RSS feeds on a console would rock
- Sony mentioned something about this being free...I think they mean it
That's about it. They announced a bunch of other cool cameras and video recorders but the gaming stuff and TV's were the things I was really interested. Sony is really kicking some ass in the TV and camera department but I have to admit that I was hoping for some more PS3 stuff or at least a few more accessories. Oh well, we'll see what happens the rest of the show.
