SONY LIVES

Sony's most recent big effort to jam its foot in the door of "videogames as entertainment" was Afrika, a game that offers the player the experience of playing a videogame about being driven around Africa in a jeep, taking photographs of computer-rendered animals. I played it for maybe five minutes: the grass texture was awful. If you're going to set your game entirely on a savannah, make some nice grass textures, for god's sake.

Sony celebrated the release of this game by setting up this swank arrangement in a fancy hotel in Tokyo: for 18,900 yen a night, you could stay in this hotel room equipped with a PlayStation 3, a copy of Afrika, and a 1080p HD projection TV. The caveat of the deal was that it was 18,900 a night "per person", "minimum 2 persons", "maximum 2 persons". Why not just say it's 37,800, then? Seriously. That sort of thing really chills my spine. 

Sony still has a chance -- as much a chance as anyone -- to crack the market wide open. They've got Little Big Planet coming soon, which seems like just the thing Japanese gamers and non-gamers will find irresistible (if they already own a PlayStation 3), and they've got PlayStation Home launching soon, which -- skeptical and bitter about it as I may be -- is an excellent opportunity and should most definitely prove to be a "Nice Thing To Have Around". (If you already own a PlayStation 3.)

The problem is that Sony isn't offering people a whole lot of amazing, compelling reasons to own a PlayStation 3. They might just have put all their eggs in one basket re: Metal Gear Solid 4, and if that's the case, what the hell were they thinking?

Here is a list of games confirmed to be playable at the Sony booth at this year's Tokyo Game Show:

Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock
An already-released guitar game that Japanese people have already expressed close to no interest in. Certainly not a system seller.

FIFA 09 World Class Soccer
Again, certainly not a system seller. Will be on sale when Tokyo Game Show is underway.

Street Fighter IV
Interesting! Available in every arcade in Japan now, though should prove excellent for its online battling service.

Resident Evil 5
Everybody wants to play this one! Also coming out for the Xbox 360. Looks mostly like Resident Evil 4 with shinier graphics. Many people will look at this statement and say "SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!" If you are one of those people, here you go.

Lumines Super Nova
Lumines. Now playable on your TV. (Again.)

Metal Gear Online
In case you didn't give it a chance before selling Metal Gear Solid 4 back.

Way of the Samurai 3
Marginally popular series gets a third installment. It's about samurai. The developers have never had a bona-fide huge hit. If they ever made one, it couldn't happen to nicer people.

Sonic World Adventure
I'm not sure what this is. I've Googled it and I'm still not sure what this is. A new Sonic the Hedgehog game?

SOCOM: Confrontation
Not spectacularly interesting to the Japanese gamer community.

PlayStation Home
Could really be something. That said, if Home, of all things, turns out to be the ultimate system-seller, I quit.

Mainichi Issho
This cute little un-game has been vigorously updated daily since the PlayStation 3's release. And they have a PSP version coming along. Who knows what the future has in store.

MotorStorm 2
Big cars and loud music! MotorStorm has a chance -- how big that chance is depends on your perspective -- to become "the next Burnout", whatever that means.

LittleBigPlanet
Japanese gamers will love this, though it is going to take some months of serious warming up and concept-proofing.

Resistance 2
When Japanese gamers hear "80-player online mode", they typically don't scream "awesome!" Who knows, though? Things might change.

WWE 2009 SmackDown vs RAW
Oh -- wow!

Gundam Musou 2
Part two in Koei's successful attempt to sell Dynasty Warriors to Gundam fans. Will likely play more like the next-generation Dynasty Warriors games than the last-generation Dynasty Warriors games. Though everyone knows by now that Koei will eventually release every game they make for every system available, so many of the fans needing this game might just wait for the PlayStation 2 version.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm
This game actually seems somewhat too good to be true. Usually, the rule with manga or anime-based games in Japan is that the developer fears satisfying the customer all of the way, because then the customer won't continue to buy the next game, hoping it contains something the previous game lacked. Coincidentally, last year's Xbox 360 Naruto game by Ubisoft was not released in Japan because it contained the entirety of the first 80-something episodes of the anime's story; it must have been theorized that the game would cannibalize sales of the anime or comics. Scary!


Meanwhile, the PSP has the following games:
 
Sengoku BASARA: Battle Heroes
Capcom's answer to Dynasty Warriors, now on a handheld.

Shin Sangoku Musou: MULTI RAID
Dynasty Warriors, on a handheld, now with emphasis on multiplayer. If they can think of some kind of game-play that involves more than pressing the square button to kill and running away when your health is low, maybe they'll be onto something.

Musou OROCHI: Maou Sairin
Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors crossover, now on the PSP, with less enemies, so you can win even faster -- on the bus!

KINGDOM HEARTS Birth by Sleep
Maybe the worst and tackiest title anything has ever had, ever. It'll sell, of course, most likely with a Special Edition PSP to commemorate it.

DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY
The Final Fantasy Fighting Game; originally announced about two years ago as a casual-friendly fighting game, producer Tetsuya Nomura has recently put his foot in his mouth and explained that its scenario is "four times as long" as Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, released last year. Crisis Core was . . . an RPG. So you're saying this fighting game has 400% the story of an RPG? Seriously, now: we might just have hit on proof that Square-Enix actually don't know what they're doing.

Clank & Ratchet: Maru Hi Mission Ignition!
Ratchet and Clank on the PSP! This is the one where Clank is more important than Ratchet, so in Japan, they put his name first. That's nice.

Sarugetchu Pipo-Saru Senki
Ape Escape for the PSP -- again! I can't complain when the title literally translates to "Annals of the Pipo-saru War". That sounds amazing.

Patapon 2 Donchaka
"Patapon" is a sound word. So is "donchaka". It looks and feels like LocoRoco, cute and casual-friendly; it did not sell a billion copies or end world hunger. Games journalists, however, loved it, so here's a sequel.

BLEACH ~Soul Carnival~
Fact: Sony Computer Entertainment Japan have released five games titled "Bleach: Heat the Soul" in the last three years. That's a bit much! "Soul Carnival" is likely their way of rebranding the series in a desperate last-ditch attempt when they realized that it really is the exact same game as the last one. (These games are, simply put, menu-based fighting games. That's kind of a crock, if you ask me.)

Mainichi Issho Portable
Here you can help the adorable cat Toro live his life on your PSP. The PS3 version -- updated daily since the PS3's release -- shows Toro at home. If the PSP version shows him in a private train car, that'd be great.

Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida or2
A marginally successful pseudo-strategy game (and one of my favorite games of last year) gets a sequel despite lukewarm sales because of strong critical reception.

LocoRoco 2
Journalists loved LocoRoco -- and gamers mostly did, too -- so here's a sequel. Makes perfect sense.

THE iDOLM@STER SP
Don't get me started on this one.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam
Remember what I said about anime-based games trying to satisfy the customer as little as possible? This is the latest in a series of Gundam fighting games for the PSP which always sell a half a million copies in the first week and then disappear from the sales rankings. It is also clearly not what the players truly want: no, they're all waiting for "Gundam vs. Everything That Is Not Gundam". Bonus remark: I do believe this is the first Gundam property to use the word "Gundam" thrice in its title. The Nobel committee needs to establish a new category of prize to honor this.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2
It's a sequel Namco "Tales of" game starring multiple characters from multiple "Tales of" games. If Final Fantasy Dissidia is "Kingdom Hearts without the Disney", then this is "Kingdom Hearts Without The Disney or The Final Fantasy: The Sequel".


Sony says that 14 "unannounced" games will also debut at TGS, and that three of them will be for the PlayStation 3. Will any of them be "The One Game"? If I were a Sony investor, I'd very well hope so, because nothing listed above is a guaranteed block-busting multi-million-seller except maybe for that Final Fantasy Dissidia, though chances are that game won't be the second coming.