'About 40' download games for PS3

Sony has revealed that it is working on "about 40" exclusive games ready to be downloaded through PlayStation 3's equivalent of Xbox Live Arcade, the e-Distribution Initiative (EDI).

To ensure it will be full of more than just retro games and mobile phone clones, Sony is putting up the money to pay developers to create original, PS3-pushing 3D titles.

Sony's own system will be "a call to action to the development community to encourage them to create games specifically for us, that we would fund, that we would publish, in the online sense of the word, and distribute online," Phil Harrison, president of Sony's worldwide studios, explained to semi-official website threespeech.com.

"We're developing about 40 products that fit that strategy right now," Harrison continued. "We showed the very first one of those, called flOw, at the Tokyo Game Show for the first time. That got a really, really good response."

And with games like that and Calling All Cars (the new name for David Jaffe's Criminal Crackdown), Harrison said that Sony is aiming to "encourage developers to push the machine technically, creatively, artistically - to innovate in lots of different ways".

He also couldn't resist a little dig at Xbox Live Arcade, adding "...because what we've seen on other systems tend to be retro 2D games, and we're pushing the 3D capabilities of PlayStation 3 ... plus, the fact that every PS3 has a hard disc drive means that we're not restricted by the size of the download."

So with the promise of unrestricted downloads in 3D, what games and genres would you like to see on PS3's e-Distribution Initiative? High-tech or homebrew? Live-like budget titles or innovative epics? Why not debate it in our forum right now?

November 2, 2006