SDCC 2013 is getting started down in beautiful California, and Sony is already taking the lead with a brand new teaser for The Amazing Spider-Man 2! This is the first official teaser, and it’s setting up further reveals to come from Hall H on Friday when Sony hosts the panel for the Marc Webb directed sequel.
Why am I still talking? Let’s take a look and a listen as we hear Jamie Foxx speaking as Electro for the first time!
Excuse me as I have the biggest fangirl moment you’ve seen in a while…
What could cause such a reaction? Well it’s only a game announced at Sony’s E3 press conference that has been a long time coming. “Oh. All this over a game?”, you might say and I’d be inclined to agree except I. Love. This. Game. What game? It’s none other than Disney’s Kingdom Hearts.
When the first Kingdom Hearts came out in 2002, I only picked it up because I’m a fan of Disney characters. I hadn’t really played much of the Final Fantasy series so that aspect of it meant nothing to me. However, within a couple of hours of gameplay, I was hooked. It’s not often I’ll play through a game more than once, and it is rare that I’ll do it more than twice. I have played through that first Kingdom Hearts game at least ten times. Then 2005 rolled around and Kingdom Hearts 2 came out. Back then I thought I’d waited an eternity for that second game. Little did I know that I’d be halfway to my grave before the third full game was announced. Sure there have been quite a few small games released, mostly for Nintendo handhelds, but they haven’t captured the greatness that is the full-blown console version.
Thankfully, it seems as if my wait is finally over…
That’s right, Kingdom Hearts 3 is finally going to be released! Not only that, but Square Enix is putting together the first few games of Kingdom Hearts and re-releasing them for the PS3 in September. NOT ONLY THAT but if you preorder you will get a limited edition artbook.
[quote]How about 24 pages of behind-the-scenes imagery like character renders, promotional artwork and concept artwork from various Disney worlds from previous KINGDOM HEARTS titles like the original KINGDOM HEARTS, KINGDOM HEARTS Re:Chain of Memories, and KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 Days. — Square Enix[/quote]
I didn’t really need another reason to preorder, but I’m a sucker for behind the scenes stuff and my bookshelf is missing a Kingdom Hearts book.
So if you were looking for a reason to justify purchasing the Playstation4, you’ve got one now. Lest you all think I’m alone in my excitement for this new chapter of a great franchise, the moment people realized what they were actually showing a trailer for, Twitter was one excited Kingdom Hearts tweet after another. It seems there are quite a few of us who’ve been waiting patiently for this day!
In a nerd conversation of epic proportions the other day with Dr. Kronner, I disclosed that it was my dream to see the three studios controlling the biggest Marvel superhero franchises to come to an agreement and make a trilogy of awesome movies on par with the Avengers, but involving everyone. This would mean Spiderman, the Avengers, the X-men and the Fantastic Four all sharing the same universe and then Marvel Studios, Fox, and Sony all split the revenue from the trilogy. Clearly this is a fevered dream that will never happen, but there has been news that Sony may be looking to offload the film rights to Spiderman in the future according to a report at Geek Rest:
A new report has surfaced that suggests Sony may be exploring their options as to how they can raise capital for their fledgling hardware divisions by selling off several of their numerous music and film properties. According to CEO Kazua Hirai, Sony is currently considering a proposal from investor Daniel Loeb and his hedge fund company Third Point that would see Sony selling off several of their movie properties including Resident Evil and – wait for it – Spider-Man.
“Third Point’s proposal involves the way we manage a core business of the Sony group and the direction of our management. So the Sony board will give it thorough consideration before replying to Mr Loeb,” explained Hirai.
So although it’s not as grand as my plan that the studios would never buy into, at least that’s one of the big heroes that could possibly be joining the fray of Marvel Studio’s/Disney’s shared movie universe.
I know it’s not a guarantee that Sony would sell to Marvel Studios/Disney, but really who else could make the highest bid for the rights? This is a company that not only has Marvel in it’s pocket, but it’s now showing off the recently bought Star Wars franchise by announcing a new trilogy and a crap load of new standalone movies to boot. In the coming decade, Disney will have made more movie money than all of the other studios combined, unless DC can get some steam behind their own sought after shared movie universe in which the Man of Steel may or may not kick start. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, what does everyone think of this news? After all of the recent reacquiring of characters such as Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher, Ghost Rider and Blade, would it be a big game changer if Marvel Studios had Spider-Man in its holster? Sound off below!
UPDATE via Comic Book Therapy:
[box_light]After the initial post from The Register hit, more details regarding what is in the proposal have hit. Unfortunately it doesn’t look good for those wanting Spidey in the MCU either. The proposal that Loeb has brought to Sony wouldn’t be to sell of the franchises, but rather spin their entertainment branch into a separate entity that people can buy into. So the long and short of it is, don’t expect Peter Parker to be helping Tony Stark or any of The Avengers anytime soon.[/box_light]
For the past several days the internet has been aflutter with anticipation for Sony’s press conference, which promised an announcement to excite the masses. Sony had been pretty outspoken about letting Microsoft take the first step in announcing a next-gen console so when they dropped word that they’d be leading the race, hosting a major reveal event tonight, it came as a happy surprise. I’ve frequented the PS4/Xbox 720 rumor mills over the past couple months and considering they’re slated to hit stores in an estimated 8 – 10 months, I feel like we’re entitled to some cold hard facts and previews to drool over. At 6:00 PM this evening (EST), Sony was kind enough to acquiesce. Here is a recap of the Sony Meeting 2013.
Defying all expectation, the meeting actually began right on time kicking off with the typical video montage fanfare before our emcee, Sony President Andrew House, took the stage. Taking no time at all for formalities, House immediately began talking about the PS Vita and its mobility and flexibility. He went on to stress the importance of cross-play and being always connected. Following a brief recap of Playstation’s success and failures leading up to present, House indicated that the current state of connectivity and cross-platform interaction demanded a new console. This new console, of course, is the PS4.
At this point I’m feeling a little anxious – talk of mobile gaming and ‘always-on’ systems typically means Facebook integration and the sort of added features that become more irksome peripheral ideas than anything else. Being able to post my new platinum trophy on a friend’s wall is a nice little gimmick, sure, but I don’t want this to be the focus of my Playstation 4. My first impression is one of tentative concern. This could be a positive way of telling us all use of their games requires online connectivity – a verification process that could cause whole experiences to be ruined by a lapsing internet connection.
House then introduced Mark Cerny, the ‘lead system architect’ of the PS4, to talk about the Playstation 4’s inner workings. The Playstation 4 is very definitely a powerful machine, what Cerny described as a ‘super-charged PC’. The specs listed exactly as spoken:
CPU: x86
8GB RAM
CPU almost 2 Teraflops
System memory GDDR5
Highly enhanced PC GPU
Shortly after going over the innards of the next Sony console, Cerny revealed the brand new Dualshock controller, which closely matched some concepts that have been floating around the internet recently.
Photo: playstationgang.com
This is purely an aesthetic nitpicky thing, but I’m not a fan of the new controller. The raised edges on the analog sticks are ugly, as is the touchpad, and anyway I’ve always loved the consistent model for the Dualshock. I’m sure after 4 months of owning one the Dualshock 3 will look like a sad piece of archaic technology, but to fresh eyes this is a visual step down.
Cerny then gave a superficial demonstration of the tech by showing off a real-time demo of the new Unreal engine, which featured two immense demons causing large-scale destruction in a snowy environment. The visuals don’t immediately stand out as a leap forward, but if you know where to look you can tell the graphics are definitely improved.
And shortly after he revealed his next title, a new IP called Knack which, despite its cartoonish, simple visual style showcased an impressive amount of fluid, moving objects (The protagonist himself is made up of several dozen of these).
Cerny continued to talk about the power behind the PS4, mentioning there will be virtually zero time between boot-up and game start. Similarly, downloads, streaming and sharing content will supposedly be nearly instant on the PS4’s system. In fact, Cerney stated demos can be started even before the download is complete.
The kind of speed and power indicated seems far beyond anything I’d expect from a console gaming platform. Beyond what I’m willing to believe as well, until I can see it in action (at least this is what I’m trying to tell myself between squee-ing).
The next speaker brought on stage was Dave Perry, one of the founders of Gaikai. Perry began by saying that Gaikai will be the catalyst for Sony’s new all-encompassing social structure. Facebook and Ustream will be integrated into this system, and additional features will include spectating or even taking control of a friend’s games. Reinforcing the idea of always-on and persistent play, Perry talked about reducing latency between the system and controller, and furthermore between the console and the Vita – that’s right, there will be remote play between the PS4 and the Sony handheld. Perry also revealed that in the future Gaikai will hopefully be used to stream older games, all the way back to the PS1, effectively serving as all backwards compatibility for the PS4.
Some of these social features are actually very cool. The Dualshock 4’s ‘share’ button makes it very easy to record video and share it with the friends, and spectating/joining games is something that has always been looming somewhere in the future of online play. I doubt I’ll ever do much with this stuff, but I think it’s neat, and hopefully it’ll do a lot to strengthen the PS community and brand.
After Cerny left the stage, the game demos began. The first official debutwas Killzone: Shadowfall and I think I summarized it pretty well on Facebook while watching it live:
Killzone is one of the titles we always see at Playstation announcements and while each game does a fantastic job showcasing the power of the console, the franchise is unavoidably boring. I’ve tried on multiple occasions to try to get into the series and never once enjoyed myself. That being said, despite immense levels of indifference coursing through every fiber of my being, the trailer looks gorgeous.
Next up was Evolution Studios who announced a new driving game called Drive Club. The game looks like it will take full advantage of PS4’s social features to take Need For Speed’s Autolog to a much higher level. Additionally, the amount of detail and care that has supposedly gone into the car models is near Peter-Jackson-Lord-of-the-Rings level stuff. All in all, though I’m not a racing game fan, this looks like a great direction to take the genre.
Following that, Sucker Punch showed the trailer for Infamous: Second Son. Infamous is another series that, for the life of me, I can’t get into. Friends of mine and critics I respect all like this series but I found the first game very generic and never could convince myself to play (Admittedly, I hear it’s far superior to the first one). The intro from Sucker Punch’s speaker sounded intriguing and actually reminded me a lot of Watch Dogs, however the teaser was just a lot of super powered fighting and douchebaggy protagonist mugging in front of the camera. Like Killzone: Shadowfall, the trailer looked great and I’ll probably never play it.
For the sake of length here, I’m going to list some of the other announcements and move on:
Jonathan Blow’s new game following Braid. The Witness.
David Cage came on stage (My cue to take a break) and showed a tech demo from Quantic Dream.
Media Molecule showed off something with PS Move and puppets?
Capcom announced they’re working on a new engine and showcased a work in progress, tentatively titled Deep Down. Looks insane.
Square Enix showedAgni’s Philosophy and announced a new Final Fantasy game is under development.
Following all of that, Ubisoft took the stage and showed a new trailer for the much anticipated Watch Dogs. This was not explicitly focused on any kind of narrative aspect, as we saw in the initial gameplay reveal in 2012 which featured a shootout outside a nightclub, but rather seemed to be a much smaller, more incidental interaction with some NPCs in the open world. And while I’d say this demo isn’t as exciting as that other one, I think it reveals a lot more about the potential this game has to blow the doors down on the limits we’ve grown accustomed to in video games.
Next, Blizzard made an appearance to announceDiablo III will be ported to PS3 and PS4 in the future, and finally Bungie rounded out the night with a brief look at Destiny, making it clear that now that they’ve achieved their independence from Microsoft, they will support Sony just as strongly as their previous overlords.
With that, we got a closing and a holiday 2013 release and that’s all for the Sony Meeting 2013!
I went into this press conference expecting long-winded PR nonsense interspersed with some mind blowing game previews, and instead I got pretty much the opposite – some really amazing tech was described and shown, Sony made very clear they’ve made a conscious effort to make it easy to develop games on the PS4 (The PS3 was notoriously difficult to work with for developers) and they are still dedicated to making real games rather than peripherals. Meanwhile the games revealed, for the most part, met expectations on the level. Still a mystery? Pricing and what the goddamn thing even looks like.
In probably the most groan inducing and obvious news to ever surface, a sequel to this year’s The Amazing Spider-Man is in the works. After the first one came out to a generally positive reaction from audiences, this money grab new franchise reboot seems determined to follow through with its shameless planned effort to make a new Spider-Man trilogy. At the time however, director for the first film, Marc Webb, was unconfirmed for a return. Now it seems like we’ll have to endure get to see another film starring the wonderful Mr. Garfield and his spectacularly lame portrayal of the hippest, least relatable, and most lame-sauce version of Peter Parker yet. [Editor’s Note – I totally disagree, Garfield > Maguire]
Aren’t I tortured?
Now if it wasn’t clear, I’m not a fan of the movie. I found myself trying really hard to stay positive about the movie right up until I actually saw it, but boy was I ever let down. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of epic proportions, nor was I even expecting a knockout, drag down epic superhero film. What I got instead was probably one of the stupidest, most uninteresting, boring superhero films I’ve ever seen. As I was watching it I found myself groaning in disgust or facepalming at the inanity of everything, literally every 5 minutes. Not to mention the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie since the Hulk Dogs from Ang Lee’s Hulk; The goddamned lizard mouse. Plus the sweaters Peter wears, oh GOD the layers on this guy! What is he anemic? Dude wears at least 4 layers of clothes in every scene where he’s not in his Spider-Man garb.
4! Four layers of clothes! Ah! Ah! Ah!
I’ve never seen a film with such a perfect mix of boring, dumb, and redundancy. I kept trying to forget all of the previous things in the film that I found retarded, for lack of a better word, but they just kept coming. Eventually I realized the true meaning of this film lied in it’s franchise value, and the lack of any substance, or anything new or interesting was because of this. People often talk about who is or isn’t a hack in Hollywood, and the guys who wrote this, god bless them for trying. They’re obviously fans of the character, who had to deal with immense studio pressure to make the film as toyetic, commercial, broad and franchisable as possible. What I mean by this, is that it’s the case of a studio counting its eggs before they hatch. The whole film felt like an attempt to make a movie, solely to make other movies, rather than actually tell an interesting, coherent, original story.
Script? Story? Just make the damn movie, we need that Spider-Cash!
So hearing that Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb are coming back isn’t exactly a surprise, but leaves me with no real feelings of joy either. I had no huge problems with Garfield, although he did seem to be sleepwalking through the scenes that didn’t have to have him crying, skateboarding, or crying while skateboarding. He’s not the blame for his character being utterly shit-tastic. I’ve never seen a guy whose shit was so ruined despite looking cool, having a hot babe be obviously into you, being rad at skateboarding, and being a goddamned genius. Furthermore all of the awesome camerawork that was promised by Marc Webb was mostly absent, as I recall a big hooplah being made about the POV swinging sequences, of which I can barely remember. I don’t mean to trash them both, because they did what they could with what they had. The entire thing was a massive failure on every level, except for monetary gain. Which it was made for to begin with, so in that regard it’s a success. I know I’m in the minority with that opinion here at GB, (4.5/5) but It’s how I feel.
Seriously, look how tortured he is!
Will I be looking forward to seeing the new Spider-Man film? No. Will I see it? If somebody else pays for the ticket, snacks, and then is willing to sit through my rant after the film is over? Yes. Will I be continuing further coverage of the sequel as plot details are released? Yes, but only because my editor hates me. [True.]
Let me start off by saying, I’m not the most active gamer. Oh sure, I used to be. I used to be that guy who read 2-3 gaming magazines every month, back when multiple gaming magazines still existed, and charted out game releases on my calendar, eagerly awaiting the new releases of Conker’s Bad Fur Day or Metal Gear Solid 2. In the recent years, I’ve kept getting gaming consoles, but I find myself using them for gaming less and less. I can count on on two hands how many PS3 games I have, and despite having a rather sizable 360 library, I really only play 2 games with any regularity, and they’re both sports games and multiplayer.
Kick faces everyday.
With the way Microsoft and Sony have positioned their systems, gaming consoles aren’t just for games anymore, not by a long shot. So despite my lack of interest in 90% of the actual games being made today, I’m still hotly anticipating the release of any new hardware and the plentiful amounts of wondrous technology it brings to my living room. I even bought the Kinect, not only because I like jumping up and down or inane dancing games, but because I thought the image capturing technology and voice recognition were just plain cool. To this day, I still love being able to command my XBox to pause my movie, merely with my voice. That’s right, I don’t even want to have to move to grab the controller.
Unfortunately, there’s a cruel dichotomy for big fat men who want to move even less but still play games, as the current trend in gaming is standing up and interacting with your game – direct player control through motion sensing and all of that active, almost exercise, balderdash. This theme seems to be continuing, with the little glimpses that have been released by Microsoft, with a project of theirs tentatively codenamed Durango that looks to immerse players ever further into their gaming environment by literally projecting them into the game.
via [GameTyrant]
“The patent describes how the room layout will be scanned and how the images will adjust to take account of wall color or objects like a cylindrical lamp. It also mentions a depth camera (which I’m assuming is the Kinect device) that will adjust the perspective of the images depending on where the user is looking.
The patent reads that in the context of a gaming scenario, the user “may turn around and observe an enemy sneaking up from behind”.
If that sounds strange and vague to you, here are some pictures to illustrate, taken from the incredibly-boring-to-read patent.
It’s all fun and games until the projections come to life and try to murder you.
It maps your room in 3D, and then projects weird mountains and trees in the background, presumably while you’re playing Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s a neat idea in theory, and if it is even half as successful as it is in these drawings (it won’t be), it’d be really fun for hyperactive kids to jump around and pretend they’ve got a snake in their boot or whatever. The rest of us will just get tired of it, like all the other gimmicky motion control/get up and dance games, and just wanna sit back down and beat the crap out of people in UFC. If anything, I want to move less while gaming. Let me hook up nodes to my skull and control that shit with my thoughts, so I don’t even need to move my hands.
4! Four layers of clothes! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Grizzly Bomb 