Scenes from GDC

Entry #3, 2:15 p.m.: Sony -- "Take Me On"

At its best, being at GDC is like listening to the commentary track on a DVD. At its worst, it's like E3. Which is big, loud, and free of much substance at both its best and worst.

Phil Harrison's keynote speech that kicked off this Wednesday's GDC sessions was very E3. It started under the considerable shadow of Guitar Hero. While we're waiting that Franz Ferdinand song, Take Me On, came on. Most of the people in the Civic Auditorium, myself included, wouldn't know it if weren't for Guitar Hero. Just as it's getting to those cool up and down riffs part way into the song - you know: green red yellow blue yellow hold-reddddddd - they cut the music off and introduce Phil Harrison, the Sony head honcho whose job it is to impress us with the promise of the Playstation 3. And, oddly enough, as he walks out, a few notes of "Another One Bites the Dust" are played. I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

It's a decent enough presentation. Harrison shares the stage with plenty of developers who come out to show snippets of what they're working on. David Jaffe strolls out looking like he just got out of bed. His job is to reassure us that Sony is still supporting the Playstation 2, which they clearly are. We get to see Kratoes rip the wing off a giant eagle and pluck out a cyclops' eye. But we're assured that the PS3 will be backwards compatible across the board from day one. Microsoft's sad pretensions towards backwards compatibility are an easy act to follow, and Sony is well aware that they've got an enormous userbase to keep happy.

PlayStation 3 Xbox Live

Xbox Live, on the other hand, is a tough act to follow. A lot of the talk about the Playstation 3's network capability sounds like a matter of chasing Sony trying to catch up with Microsoft. This is a developer's conference, after all, so Harrison stresses the various online revenue options. He shows an example of a driving game with a track available for a dollar and an offroad racing game with a new car available for four dollars. He stresses that those aren't actual prices, leaving us to wonder if they're doing to be lower or higher. Either way, the implications have been clear for a long time. Not only will you not be done paying for a game when you leave the store, you might not even have to go to the store to start paying. Tell your credit card: digital distribution is the future.

There's a definite effort to justify Blu-Ray technology, which is going to be a messy unpleasant battle in Hollywood. I'm sure Sony would like us on their side, so Ted Price from Insomiac is kind enough to come out and testify that it really helps to have so much extra room on the disc. He then shows us a playable bit of Insomniac's new shooter, Resistance: the Fall of Man. It's all fancy weapons, a la Ratchet & Clank, in a stylishly monochrome world. But he follows up with a gloriously colorful teaser for another Ratchet & Clank. By the time it's over, I've forgotten to be pissed off about Blu-Ray.

Sony's tech for the PS3 certainly looks good, but so what? An underwater scene of schools of fish, mud that can splash, dry, or harden, and rag doll physics on a couple of hundred rag dolls are all good and well. That stuff certainly flies at E3, so I'm sure it'll be shown again. But in the meantime, this large scale corporatespeak just feels like someone waving money and making promises. I feel like I need a shower.