Monday 19 March 2007
Is it only two years since Sony revealed PlayStation 3 to a rabidly optimistic public? If, like us, you're wondering why it feels a whole lot longer than that, then the answer is simple: So very much has happened.
Unlike Microsoft, who achieved the impressive feat of quietly researching, manufacturing and then launching a mega-powerful console almost simultaneously around the world, Sony has ducked, weaved, disappointed and, eventually, amazed almost on a week-by-week basis. By rights, Sony's public mouthpieces, Phil Harrison, Kaz Hirai and Ken Kutaragi, should be weary like geriatric racehorses by now.
So, as PS3 finally crests the horizon and Sony welcomes Europe to a party that started four months ago, we've taken a look at the action leading up to the console's launch.
May 2005
As the penultimate E3 (although we didn't know that yet) geared up, several nudge-nudge-wink-wink style adverts sprouted up around Los Angeles, urging readers to 'Welcome chang3'.
Just days later, PlayStation 3's inevitable unveiling took place, spiking wonders like MotorStorm, Killzone, Killing Day and I-8 (later Resistance: Fall of Man) into our retinas. Was the footage real? Sony said yes, forumites said no... we just stared longingly at the pretty pictures.
We'd hardly recovered before Konami took the stage and the absurdly exciting Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots emerged, accompanied by a typically crazy movie poking fun at itself and everything else. But, while we fawned over the games and the internet frothed at the mouth over the boomerang-style controller, Kutaragi went all peculiar and tried to convince us PS3 wasn't a games machine.
Hideo Kojima originally had "no plans" for a character like Metal Gear Solid's Cyborg Ninja until Yoji Shinkawa's art had him saying "hell yeah, a ninja cyborg!"
One of the most iconic D&D RPGs ever made stood out among Baldur's Gate and Fallout as it was the "first" to make companions "feel like fully functional parts of the story"
