About a week ago, Sony held their Playstation Holiday Preview event in Toronto, where media and the general public could get their hands on the latest technology and games that are set to be released this holiday season, and some titles like LittleBigPlanet 2 that aren’t set for release until 2011.
Staged at the newly renovated Sony Centre in downtown Toronto, the event had games like Killzone 3, Gran Turismo 5 (the real thing, not Prologue), LittleBigPlanet 2, Tron, and a little game called Call of Duty: Black Ops. They also had something like a dozen PSPs on display, as well as Playstation Move games, and 3D TV being showed off.
The biggest hit of the show for me was Call of Duty: Black Ops, and while you think that might be obvious because of how much people love that game, know that I’m not one of those people. Don’t get me wrong; Modern Warfare was good, but I never cared enough to get around to Modern Warfare 2, let alone really invest myself in the rest of the series. But Black Ops changed things for me, and it wasn’t because Activision has done anything magical with the storyline or the characters, but rather because they revealed that the game would be playable in full 3D. Now, that doesn’t mean much, not even to me, because Sony still hasn’t sent me that free 3D set I’ve been begging for, but the fact that I was interested in 3D made me interested in the rest of the game somehow. Looking down the scope literally means looking down the scope, and getting grenades thrown at you looks like grenades are being thrown at you. 3D or not, the game looked goooooooood.
The other games of the event didn’t disappoint, however. Gran Turismo looked beautiful, as anyone would expect from a game that’s been in development for fifty freakin’ years, although I didn’t notice the 3D effect adding much to the experience. In fact, something didn’t translate well in the 3D process and there was some unfortunate ghosting of the images – if anything, not having spent $3000 on a 3D set will save you here!
LittleBigPlanet 2 showed really great, as did Rock Band 3, and Tron. People seemed to be genuinely interested in everything that Sony’s got to show at this event, and they’ve only got more to show as the months roll on. These events just get me giddy for E3 2011, because once that rolls around, we’ll be on to the next generation of these titles – the next Call of Duty, something new from Harmonix, and hopefully a new PSP!
I had the chance to chat with Matt Levitan from Sony for a few moments, and he said that the Move was 80% sold out across all outlets, and they’re working hard to produce the second wave of units to ship to stores. No specific numbers have been released, and they’ve never shipped as much product for any launch as Move – not software, hardware, or anything. The Move actually shipped two to three times more than the Playstation 3 when it first launched, twice as much as PSPgo when it first launched, and within the first eight or nine days, the new tech was 80% sold out.
No matter how you spin it, Sony’s got a killer lineup this holiday season. With the newly launched Move, and Gran Turismo and Call of Duty (although the latter is available for every system known to man), arriving on the PS3, there is something for anyone. Your move, Nintendo. (I’d say it was Microsoft’s move, but we already know what they’re doing).