GDC Sony Keynote

Phil Harrison on stage.

Speech focus on developers tools? Not.

“We’re here to talk about audience participate and emerging play.”

“Game 3.0” What is this, why relevant? Mag cover: Time mag “You are the person of the year”. Phil thought this is the great moment for the Internet economy.

Web 2.0 is not a standard, it’s a philosophy. Phil O’Reilly. Web 2.0 community strong. Doesn’t really mean anything until you lay products on the sites, shareing collaborating.

Start a moment on what this means for the games industry

Game 1.0: disconnected console. Cartridges. Game contained in a piece of plastic.

Game 2.0: online games, static gamme contet the on the disc.

Game 3.0: online content. Social Interaction, content creation, powered insights, emergent entertainment, creativity.

IMO a bit lame attempt at trying to leave a mark into history by coming up a new term. Version numbers are so last… version? Will not use the term anywhere.

First thing being shared: All PS3 players will have a HOME. Cute logo. New Icon on the cross media bar. Home.

Scott, producer of Home coming to stage. Tech issues. Wrong controller, screen blinking.

Going to the Home Universe. Central Lounge, you can navigate through. Cool looking place, customizable avatar. Virtual PSP. Purchasable clothing. When you buy games, you get more clothes, games can unlock content.

3D community, social networking. You can customize the face of the character details. Presets, large variety of different face presets available.

Back to ome centra lounge. HD video can be shown inside the 3D space. All visualization

Other users are onloine. Multiple different chatting methods. Quickchat. Virtual keyboards. Sai Ho instead of Hi. :) Voice chatting.

More lounges, bowling alley, pool tables. Televisions with demos everywhere. Arcade cabinets. Smooth transitioning between modes of gaming etc.

Own Private Apartments. You can invite people using friend list in the virtual PSP. Tricking out the apartments. Changing wallpapers. Can sit on furniture. All functionality avaiable. You can download additional furniture. Limited edition items from games. Physics based placement of furni. All content from hard drive avalable in Homes, you can put your photos to the walls and everyone will see this.

User Created Content. Demo, takes photo of audience and puts memory stick into PS3, puts photo to the wall. Uses wrong machine so picture doesn’t come up. :)

Showing other apartment that’s “!more tricked out”. Cool looking, pool table. Nice lighting! People having a party outside. Music and video can be streamed to people in the world.

Physics demo, throws tv down the stairs. Movie running on the screen while model moves. Really uses the PS3 horsepower. “Look, Bravias are reliable even in virtual worlds.”

Showing room with movie trailers running on walls. Impressive looking, very, very high image quality all over.

“Home is not just about Sony brands and games.” Will allow other brands to come to the world. Sports Lounge demo. Users Maya to build the models. Any surface can have video, HTML, other media. Reuse existing content easy.

Overall feeling – looks like a sterile, polished Sony-world. Not very exciting. Makes me think of Second Life, except looks nicer and is easier to use. Linden should maybe be worried. Will be packed full of people having cybersex, will be interesting to see what Sony does about this.

Hall of Fame, new Playstation network feature. Features trophies you’ve collected from games, you can get them from games, put to the hall of fame, get your friends into your HoF, show how much you’ve played. Can reuse game content as trophies, will be easy for developers to add to games, SDK available. Showing a massive space with tons of trophies inside.

Public and private spaces for everyone user. Will have pets. Will get more sophisticate content. Public beta begins April 2007, Service autumn 2007.

Singstar

New online functionality for Singstar. New songs, you can chat with other players, see profiles of users. See which songs people are singing. See comments on your performances. SingStor, get more content. Video stream previews of songs, streamed from server. Add songs to cart, purchase. Songs download on the background. You can record your performances, including video, upload to the community and have people comment on your performances. Coming out in May-June in US. Not being said but content availability subject to record label deals so Europeans will be fucked.

Playstation Edge. New core technologies, shared to all developers. Two core components: GCD Replay, get best of out the graphics chip. SPU Geometry processing libraries, get the best out of the cell chip.

Another brand new product: Little Big Planet game. Showing same developers old content. Rag Doll Kung Fu. Media Molecule game company, new company by the RDKF guys.

New game all about creativity. Level creation. Empowering players. Shwoing a cute little character called Sackboy. Add stuff, all made of “real materials”. Real physics. Adding stuff to the level. Balls, tree, wheel that rotates like real. Stickers. Put any image you have onto the levels from the HD. Very cute graphics.

Adding grass, flowers. Everything is highly interactive, very tactile.

Showing a pre-made level. You can grab objects, including other players. Showing how to solve puzzles using the physics. Cooperative puzzle solving. Looks amazing. I’m staring the screen mouth open because this is so cool. Amazing. Makes me want to get a PS3. Coming out in early 2008.

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