Yesterday, we speculated that that Sony would unveil a touchscreen PlayStation Portable at today’s E3 press conference in Los Angeles. Sony did not deliver a new PSP for the holidays, but they did announce some very exciting things to look forward to in the coming months.
The big announcement from Sony this year is a new, motion-sensing controller for the PS3 called the Move. The controller is very similar to Nintendo’s Wii controllers, and works with the PlayStation Eye Camera to detect the position and movement of the player’s body.
To go with the controller, Sony is releasing a Sports Champions Game, along with a shooting attachment for the Move controller. The game will include Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Beach Volleyball, Archery, Table Tennis, & Bocce. By March 2011, Sony is hoping to have at least 40 titles available for use with the Move controller, including NBA 2K11, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011, Time Crisis: Razing Storm, and Toy Story 3.
Sony’s other major launch this year will be the PlayStation Plus subscription package, also for the PS3. PlayStation Plus provides users with options to expand and enhance gaming. Subscribers will reportedly get hundreds of dollars worth of value from Sony’s worldwide studios group and partners. Free content, including games and themes, are to be available later this month. A full year subscription to PlayStation Plus will be $49. A 3 month subscription will also be available $17.99, with Sony giving subscribers 3 months free to give them a taste of what the service has to offer.
The PlayStation Move will be available in Europe on September 15th, in the USA on September 19th, and will launch in Japan on October 21st. It will be $49.99 for the PlayStation Move controller by itself, but will also be available as part of the PlayStation Move Sports Champions Bundle which will include an EyeToy camera, Sports Champion game and PlayStation Move Controller for $99. A console bundle with everything in the previous bundle, including a PS3 slim, will be offered for $399.
These will certainly make Sony a stronger competitor against Nintendo and Microsoft during the annual console selling wars this holiday season.
