Last week I emailed several developers and asked if they'd be willing to write diaries covering their experiences at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Here's the first instalment from 8bit programming legend Andrew Oliver, co-founder of Blitz Games...
"Today, Silicon valley's, San Jose's Convention centre played host to the annual Game Developers Conference, boasting 15,000 attendees. The highlight of the day was Sony's Keynote talk about PSP and of course the forthcoming PlayStation 3.
"For PSP they are releasing a plug-in camera with microphone, suggesting that you would be able to use the PSP as a wi-fi video phone. They also announced you would soon be able to download games directly from the internet via wi-fi and are even providing a PSOne emulator, so that you can play classic old games on your PSP.
"Phil Harrison, President of Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, confirmed the worldwide release for the Playstation 3 would be November '06, and would that the console would ship with a 60GB Hard drive. They also showed their vision for how games will be played and paid for, explaining how e-distribution, pay per play and in game advertising would sit alongside traditional Disc sales. He explained why the PS3 needs a Blu-ray disc with its massive 50GB+ storage capacity as players will expect real virtual worlds in high-definition and that takes enormous models of extreme fidelity.
"They teased the packed audience with jaw-droppingly impressive real-time demos of some up coming PS3 titles, namely 'Warhawk', featuring a massive futuristic aerial dogfight of epic proportions. 'Motostorm' an off-road driving game that looked super-realistic and scenes from the next 'Getaway' game, showing a busy scene from Piccadilly that looks uncannily real, revealing the incredible power inside the PS3.
"The rumour from the show floor [reflecting earlier estimates from Merrill Lynch - Keef] is that the console would cost Sony something in the region of $800 to manufacture, and yet they must sell at a competitive price to consumers, so how much can they afford to subsidize this supercomputer? This could easily be made harder if Microsoft decide to drop the price of the Xbox360 around the time of PS3 launch, which seems highly likely. In this battle of the heavyweights the winner will actually be the consumer, being able to buy incredible consoles at a fraction of their real value."
