You conference was good when a fairly badass character reveal for AC was considered a low point. What didn't this have that could have made it better? I only now remembered that I'm am bummed as everyone else who wanted Persona, JRPGs etc, (basically "Japanese stuff" other than FF)! But we're just not going to see as much of it at E3, which is specifically the US audience. Sony tweaks their events for the appropriate region. Shunmue is even more surprising considering this. It's 85% funded as I write this. There are a lot of Japanese fans that aren't even going to get a chance to participate in it because it was so fast. It's $2M set, no stretch goals, so once it's done it's done.
Also, so many missing things! Hell, MGSV got a grand total of about 5 seconds of sizzle reel time and that's out in 3 months. There was legitimately enough other things to show. Not even a Nathan Drake Collection plug! No mention of the rather sizable firmware update was also surprising. They did actually have enough actual game content that things of interest like DLNA would have been a bore, where beforehand we figured that would have been awesome. Other stuff like Bloodborne DLC is, in all its glory, a sales footnote compared to what they want everything else they showed to be. All the games displayed are things they're looking to be 3-5M++ sellers. A segment on, say, Persona would have been a poor use of time for an American audience whether we as industry enthusiasts want to admit it or not.
The brief bits on Vue and Morpheus were there more for Sony's shareholders than the crowd. That's also why we get the "talk time". Honestly surprised they spent zero time boasting or bragging about any statistics. It's expected you show off at least a little when you're in such an overwhelming dominant position. Some very smart people got together and realized that trying to show a presser surrounding VR would have been very difficult and just end up awkward. We were expecting 2 hours originally. Did they just cut out huge chunks of demos? 30 minutes for Morpheus seems like it could have easily been ready.
Overdue announces from Quantic Dream and of GT7 are possible things attached to Morpheus' launch so those things can wait a bit more. When we were told there'd be a release date for No Man's Sky "soon" I'm assuming it's while Sony pens in a final Morpheus' launch. Interested in floor impressions.
Score: Pigs Fly/10. I wanted to mention that the trolling of showing the FFKawaii game JUST before FFVII was the trollingstly trolling that's ever been trolled, which is quite a feat after Square's repeated trolling last year. Someone had to have deliberately set it up that way. It was too good to troll the audience and then immediately flip it over. One of the squares on the Sony E3 bingo cars the past few years has literally been a "pigs fly..." for FFVII.
Why Sony has said recently that they're sort of forced to promote third-party stuff makes is even more understandable now. To us the lineup is weak but they have marketing with what'll be the 3 top global sellers for the year (COD, AC and Battlefront, probably in that order). That's what matters for the vast majority of gamers and certainly holiday shoppers--again returning to this being a US event. This all said, Sony is not fucking around. They could have been a bit lazy this year given their position but they decided to pour it on even harder instead. They want MIcrosoft out, or at least retreated to PC.