Home delayed, no PS3 price cut

Sept 20, 2007

At the Tokyo Game Show earlier today, Sonypresident Kaz Hirai announced that PS3's Second-Life style online community Home will not appear until next spring, but made no announcement of of a console price cut.

Sony's official TGS conference was focused on PSP's much-vaunted connection with PS3, the revealing of the Dual Shock 3 controller and showcasing the many games that Hirai believes will drives sales of PS3. Sonyclaims it has shifted a total of over 5 million consolesworldwide.

Hirai is clearly enamoured of PSP's multimedia capabilites, with much time spent discussing the Remote Play abilites of the handheld. In future, we'll be able to use the PSP to turn on PS3 remotely (over the internet), and even play PlayStation games like Lair through the PSP's remote link with the hardware, albeit at a drastically reduced visual quality. As we already knew, movies and other media will also be playable through the remote link between the consoles.

An example given of PSP-to-PS3 gameplay was friends joining in with your PS3-based golf match, through PSP's link, and spectating. Or, presumably, getting involved in multiplayer. This hypothetical scenario was also applied to a multiplayer game of football.

Hirai was also keen to stress Sony's intentions to clear up issues for third-party developers. Devs like EA and Radical (Crash of the Titans) have complained of difficulties in working with PS3's hardware, and of Sony's lack of support compared with Microsoft's dev-friendly approach. But Sony's future plans include:

• The sharing of assets and know-how from Sony's worldwide studios
• The holding of an advisory board to receive feedback from publishers
• Implementing of strategies and infomation sharing to enhance development efficiency
• Sharing of SN Systems tool chain (a suite of development tools)

This greater level of support shouldn't just improve the relationship between Sony and its outside developers, but it ought to make a near instant improvement in the quality of third-party PS3 titles, whether exclusive or ported from other platforms.

And the rest:
Hirai revealed that Sony has aquired MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios (and so Pursuit Force dev BigBig as well);
He confirmed that even existing titles on PS3 would support Dual Shock 3's rumble feature (we'll have a list later today);
In a later Q&A, Hirai hinted at the "possibility" of afuture price drop,butsaid nothing more;
And, finally, it wouldn't be a Sony conference without someone comparing PS3 to a supercomputer. Which is exactly what Hirai did. Again.