Toronto Thumbs

PlayStation Holiday Preview Event
If The Burroughes Building Is A Rockin’…

Yesterday we attended the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event at the Burroughes Building in Downtown Toronto. We’d spent a lot of time in the area before, mostly at night to catch rock shows at one of the many nearby historic venues. The Burroughes Building, however, was one we had never been to. As we entered, we were handed plain black scarves with PlayStation branding tastefully embroidered on them before being directed to the building’s third floor.

The open-concept gallery setting felt a little empty at first, but as more visitors shuffled in, it proved to be an excellent setting for mingling, trying out new and upcoming games, and chatting with people who fortunately knew a lot about the games they were discussing. Given the floor plan, it was both well organized and laid back. Several courteous attendants offered hors d’oeuvres, and these included a lot of snacks we’d otherwise never eat, so we not only got to try new and exciting games, but new and exciting snacks!

The spacious setting of the Burroughes Building also let in plenty of light, in direct contrast to last week’s X’09 event put on by Microsoft Canada, which took place in a darkened nightclub. In fact, it’s incredibly difficult to not contrast the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event with X’09.

Fortunately while the two large rooms where Sony’s event was held let in a lot of light, it did not hamper the visibility of the video displays. The place was packed full of screens, too, especially in the second, smaller room. We can’t even remember how many Bravia Televisions were lining the walls of the venue there were so many.

In terms of actual games, the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event had way more games that were not yet publicly available. Not to say that The Beatles Rock Band from X’09 was not fun to play or watch, but every already-released game shown at preview events just takes up space that could otherwise have been used by an upcoming game – even if that upcoming game would have just been a duplicate station set up so that more people can get hands-on time with a more anticipated release.

Over the next few days, we’ll be publishing our impressions of the games we got to try, see, and speak to developers about. We also have some video segments to edit (a first for us) and post, but these will go up next week due to the time it takes to digitize footage and learn how to edit decently. It might be the best thing ever, or it might be really bad. But you won’t know until you see it! One thing is for certain, however; Sony’s holiday line-up is absolutely kick-ass.

In the meantime, you can check out our Flickr gallery of the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event.

Posted in Awesome, Events, PlayStation 3, PSN, PSP, Sony |