E3 2010 Coverage
Interview With Sony Canada
By Jorge Figueiredo - June 17th, 2010
Today I had the chance to catch up with Matt Levitan from Sony Computer Entertainment Canada regarding Sony’s E3 2010 content. Sony had a strong showing, with a cadre of great games, technology, and the wildly popular Kevin Butler. Sadly, Matt’s phone dropped and we didn’t get a chance to finish the interview. However, before fate pulled the plug on his phone…
JF: 3D is a big announcement. That’s an awesome way to start.
ML: Yeah. For sure. We opened up our conference with 20 minutes of amazing footage of Killzone 3 that really blew people away. Showing people that footage in 3D was a good way to start everything off.
I watched some of the footage on the PSN and it looked pretty awesome in 2D.
[Laughing] 2D or 3D, gamers have the option of playing either, and they both look great. Same goes for Gran Turismo 5; people can play this in full on 3D, and it’s pretty cool. We know it’s not going to happen overnight, but as we show more content and the sets become less expensive, we think it certainly prove itself and do really well.
It sounds like you did really well this year.
I’d like to say so. I’m certainly a little biased, but we had a great Move demonstration; I think we certainly showed how Move is the superior device, seeing as it has a camera, and a motion-control device, and a navigational controller that allows you more control; that’s a lot that our competition can’t do. Software wise we have Killzone 3, Little Big Planet 2, GT5 – those are tough to beat.
A lot of people are saying that Killzone 3 is going to be a Halo 3 killer. What do you think about that?
You know, the original Killzone came out at the same time as one of the Halo’s – I’m not sure if it was Halo or Halo 2 – and people said the same thing back then; that Killzone was Sony’s Halo-killer. We tried our best to stay away from that. We didn’t want to have that moniker attached to the game. This year people were saying “wow, we didn’t see a shooter on the floor as nice as Killzone 3″, and it’s great; it’s great that it stands up on it’s own. It’s amazing.
And you get jet packs. What more do you need?
Jet packs, absolutely! When I first saw that a couple of months ago, I felt like a kid. I got butterflies in my stomach, and I was thinking “ooh! Can’t wait to get my hands on a jet pack!” Little moments like that are what make gaming so much fun, right?
So let’s move on to the Move. It looks accurate with very little latency. You built out from the Eye, which was really interesting to begin with. It seems to combine the best of both the other two systems. There is a fairly large camp that indicates that tactile feedback is important. Can you comment on that?
I couldn’t agree more. We showed that Sorcery demonstration, which is an actual game coming out in 2011, and what we showed was that you’re using the Move controller not only as a wand, but you’re drinking potions and doing all kinds of other things that wouldn’t be the same as doing them with just your empty hands, in thin air. There isn’t the same sense of accomplishment as there is with something in your hand. I think that having a device in your hand doesn’t take away from the experience at all; on the contrary, I think it actually adds to the immersion.
Because you’re focusing on something.
Yeah. On top of that, across the board, we showed some incredible stuff. SOCOM 4 is Move-capable; Killzone 3 is Move-capable; Little Big Planet 2 is Move-capable.
And Tiger Woods.
Oh yeah. Tiger Woods during the EA portion of the demonstration was cool. Showing how you can open and close the face of the clubs, the camera reading your motions, detecting your stance. You just don’t get that with the others.
