Being one of the three platform holders, Sony’s press conference at the E3 Media and Business Summmit is always an anticipated affair as historically it has been the platform used for big announcements in the industry. Being in the middle of a console generation, however, no hardware announcements were anticipated, so Sony simply show-cased their 2008 line-up, a few future titles and their bid to be every household’s media hub.

Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, began his talk explaining that the original PlayStation was planned to have a 10 year product lifecycle, and that this same strategy is being followed in the PlayStation 3’s case. He backed up his statement about the relative infancy of the PlayStation 3 by saying that seminal games of that generation, such as Final Fantasy VII, Gran Turismo and Tony Hawk were still on the horizon at this stage of the original PlayStation’s lifecycle. Next, as seems customary at these press conferences, Tretton boasted about one of Sony’s biggest achievements this generation - Blu-ray triumphing over HD-DVD. He also pointed out that the Cell processor is being used by IBM to power some of its latest supercomputers, and how the PS3 Folding@home project has in fact spawned the most powerful distributed computing system in the world according to Guiness.

After showing his confidence in the PlayStation 3 platform, Tretton dived straight into some games - and first up was Resistance 2, Sony’s tentpole Christmas release. Video footage was shown featuring a huge Godzilla-like monster (similar in size, if not quite in features), giving a good indication of the scale of the game. Most of the information was already known - the Chimera have spread to America and have bigger and better weapons, the game features 60 player online multiplayer and 8 player co-op. A new trailer was shown (new today, it debuted on the ‘net a few hours earlier) featuring Twin Falls, Idaho.

Charts, with a touch of class

Next up was the business end of the show, the charts and figures. Sony presented this in a very clever way, using a specially created LittleBigPlanet level to present the figures, so showcasing the game at the same time. Figures like $6.6billion in revenue for the first half of 2008 (in the US) were shown on placards that popped up when Sackboy pulled a lever. As Tretton announced Sony’s intention to expand their distribution operations to Latin America a train of trucks pulled off as if they were leaving to Brazil right now from Sackboy’s room.

To wrap up the segment, as Sackboy rode a conveyor belt some gameboxes popped up showing the titles that are to be released on Sony’s US Greatest Hits programme at $29.99. Resistance, MotorStorm and Warhawk are the first party titles, with Call of Duty 3, Fight Night Round 3, Need for Speed Carbon, Rainbow 6 Vegas, Assassin’s Creed, Oblivion and Ninja Gaiden Sigma also popping up.

In a short segment about the PlayStation 2, a video montage was shown of upcoming games including Yakuza 2, Warriors Orochi 2, Singstar Pop Vol 2 and various sports and cross platform titles. Tretton boasted about Singstar reaching 15 million sales worldwide. Sony are to release a Lego Batman PS2 bundle that also comes with the animated Justice League DVD for $149.

PlayStation Network

On to the PlayStation Network: Sony are to move to a single signon for use on the PSN and PlayStation Store for PC - that’s to come later this year. Tretton once again trotted out the numbers: 20 million pieces of content were downloaded last month on PSN, and 180 million since its inception. It took 400 days for PSN to reach 5 million users, but the next 5 million were online in less than half that time.

A new entry in the Ratchet and Clank Future series was announced for PSN: Quest for Booty. At $14.99, the title is shorter in length than a release like Tools of Destruction, but just as intense. The story continues on from where Tools of Destruction left off.

Next up was a montage of upcoming PSN titles, including Flower, Crash Commando, Fat Princess (a colourful third person arcade shooter), PixelJunk Eden, Pain Amusement Park, Siren Blood Curse and Ragdoll Kung Fu: Kings of Plastic (from the makers of LittleBigPlanet).

1 August sees the launch of Gran Turismo TV, which features pay per view automotive videos such as Top Gear and D1 Grand Prix and is accessible from within Gran Turismo 5 Prologue over the PSN. There was also a brief description of trophies, and another showing of Home with some living-spaces and game-spaces demonstrated in a short video.

Carrying on with the rollout of PSN features, Sony’s TV and film download service on PSN is going live tonight! A number of studios are already on board, such as Sony Pictures, Fox Film and TV, Warner, Disney, Paramount and Turner. Pricing starts at $1.99 per episode of SD TV shows, $2.99 to $5.99 for HD movie rentals and $14.99 for HD movie purchases. A Movie tab will appear in your PSN browser once its live, making selecting a movie seamless, and you can start watching the movie with in a minute of starting the download. You can also transfer movies to the PSP to watch them on the go. Tretton announced that this is “one of the purest expressions yet of this company’s ultimate value proposition”.

PSP - still key for Sony

Moving on to PSP, Sony is launching a new Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters Entertainment pack. This includes the PSP, the game, a National Treasure: Book of Secrets UMD and a 1 GB Memory Stick. A couple new PSP games were showcased such as Resistance Retribution - a third person game also continuing on from where Resistance: Fall of Man finished off except this time in Europe, and Super Stardust Portable. Also confirmed for US release were Patapon 2 and LocoRoco 2. Tretton’s opinion of the PSP: “We’ve always felt that PSP is one of the keys to Sony owning the living room.”

Finally going back to the PS3, Tretton handed over to Jim Lee of Sony Online Entertainment to show a video and explain the concept of DC Universe, an upcoming massively multiplayer online game. According to Lee, a famous comic artist himself, the game allows you to enter the world of DC comics, becoming a super-hero or super-villain in this large game world populated with the likes of Batman, Superman or the Flash.

New PS3 Model and Games

Tretton announced next that a new 80GB model of the PS3 will soon become the main product in their line-up - this will be the same model as the current 40GB one except with the larger hard disk, and will retail at the same price of $399. He also claimed that the PS3 has 23 exclusive games on the way - 10 on Blu-ray and 13 on PSN. A whirlwind tour of Blu-ray titles, not all of them exclusive, showed LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm, Metal Gear Solid 4, Quantum of Solave, Socom Confrontation, Ghostbusters, Soul Calibur IV, Resistance 2, The Agency, Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm, Mirror’s Edge, Resident Evil 5, Singstar, Guitar Hero World Tour, NBA 09 The Inside, Buzz! Quiz TV and finally Killzone 2.

As everyone and their dog expected, God of War 3 was announced for PlayStation 3, but no release date was offered other than “not this year”. The teaser shown was pure CG, so it’s unclear how far along development is.

Finally, a new game was announced, a massive action game called MAG (Massive Action Game). This most imaginitive game title is actually pretty descriptive - up to 256 players play in a squad based combat game. Zipper (those of Socom fame) are developing it, and have put in things like airdrops and multi-front assaults. Teams will be broken down into squads led by those who have proven themselves in game. Character growth and persistant campaigns round out the key features. The pre-recorded trailer showed an organised combat op where some players took out a base’s gate with explosives while others drove in on combat vehicles and still others were dropped in from the air.

Tretton reiterated their planned 10 year product life-cycle for the PS3 and ended with “if this is what year two of the PlayStation 3 life cycle looks like, imagine what years 3 and 4 look like”.