Sony’s E3: making a Move on the third parties

Nevertheless, the Move games showcased were a little underwhelming. Perhaps the pick of the litter was Sorcery, a sort of Harry-Potter-meets-Zelda experience with gestural spell-casts and hackneyed art direction. Elsewhere, Heroes on the Move took aim squarely at the nostalgia gland, bringing together Jak, Daxter, Ratchet and Clank for some arena-based happy-slappery.

We knew it was coming, but Twisted Metal's arrival still sent shivers down our spines.

Questions also hang over the new PlayStationPlus service, a privileged layer of PSN content available for roughly the same fee as an Xbox Live Gold account. Jack Tretton was quick to reassure listeners that PSN features currently available for free would remain free, but there’s the lingering suspicion that Sony is stealthily pricing up its online network, beginning with trinkets like avatars and Minis and ending with functions like cross-game chat. We’ll see how things stand 12 months from now, I guess.

The biggest disappointment (missing Last Guardian aside) was the absence of PlayStation Portable 2, with much time, screen space and oxygen spent on the virtues and, rather significantly, longevity of the current model. I doubt Sony will debut the new handheld in the midst of a major marketing and software push for its predecessor, though it’s certainly possible the manufacturer will attempt to keep both in the field at once, as with PS2 and PS3.

Overall, Sony’s E3 presser came a solid second, well behind Nintendo’s historic, announcement-heavy showing but an arm and a leg beyond Microsoft’s hour and a half of taking stock.

How would you rank the E3 conferences, readers?