At E3, Sony starts moving, and it's the PSP's time to go

So no surprise here: Sony's got a Motion Controller in the works too. As I've mentioned before on my blog, I do not own a PlayStation 3 yet (drop the price a couple hundred dollars, then we'll talk), but I am intrigued at their entry in the "mo-con" phenomenon (hey, that rhymes… copyright!). It basically does out of the box what the Wii Remote can do with the MotionPlus add-on. Combine that with the PS3's HD graphics and they could be onto something here… but who's their target audience with a $400 system? I'll expound on that in a later post.

They also revealed the fourth iteration of the PlayStation Portable, the PSPgo. This will be the most radically different version of the PSP thus far, though it is not a successor to the hardware. It will feature a cell phone like pop-up screen (smaller than other PSP screens) that reveals a new controller layout, including a better protected, and less convenient, analog nub. The PSPgo features 16GB of internal flash memory, which makes up for the biggest change in the system's design: no UMD drive. That's right, everything will be download only on this PSP. Sony has yet to reveal any concrete plans for how (or if) you can transfer your UMD games onto the PSPgo's memory. We all knew the UMD was a dead format, but I don't think anyone ever expected Sony would make their own games obsolete on the system for which they were deisigned. I'm more than a little wary of this, but fortunately I still have my PSP-2000 on which to play my legally purchased UMD games.

Sony also revealed an impressive line-up for their floundering portable:

Gran Turismo Mobile
Tekken 6
SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny
Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier

To be honest, the only one of these games that interests me is SoulCalibur, but it's nice to see Sony hasn't completely forgotten their flawed-but-still-fun handheld. I'm still waiting for Rockstar to try to squeeze a version of San Andreas onto the PSP like they did with the rest of their GTA3 universe games. Perhaps this push for a downloadable format will yield games like that, which would probably take up more than the UMD's 1.8GB capacity.

For the PS3, they showed off God of War III, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Gran Turismo 5 (the full game, not the $40 demo they released last year), among other games which were mostly multi-platform.

So that's Sony in a nutshell. If you want additional information about those games and more, read the GamerCast Network, Joystiq, GameSpot, or some other site that actually attended the event. I'm just commenting on what I've seen and heard on the internet. Maybe someday, I'll be getting the scoop first hand…

Anywho, keep checking for more E3 information and commentaries as I find out more, and check back soon for an editorial on recent announcements!