GDC Day One: Getting Closer to the PS3

After the keynote, Phil Harrison gave a Q&A with about fifty of his closest friends over lunch. Well, they all ate lunch, he had to talk some more. There were some tough questions asked about the status of the controller, about Blu-ray discs, and about some of the comments he made regarding the PS3's online status. I can't say he really answered any of them to my satisfaction.

I wanted to ask what he meant when he commented in the press conference that Sony was going to attempt to oversee all player-to-player transactions (instead of presumably letting them happen on ebay or other auction sites) but I was too afraid to raise my hand, especially since I had to be admitted late because I wasn't on the guest list. Did I mention that Ricardo has magical powers? Yeah so I didn't eat any of Sony's food or ask any questions out of shame, but I did think a lot about Phil Harrison's comment that it's "safe to say" the titles we saw at the press conference are "more advanced" than other titles. In my brain I was thinking "launch lineup, launch lineup!" but as I've learned in my short time at GameSpot that people are very careful about their language for a reason.

Then it was on to the show floor to see what Sony had for the PS3 there. Obviously, none of the stuff from the press conference was available on the show floor, but the duck demo from last year's E3 had made a comeback, as well as a few new technology demos, including one with a million fishies. I took the time to actually learn what a cell processor is, and I've decided that the new buzz word needs to be "SPE" which is the name of the seven parallel processors in a cell chip that allow ducks and water and pirate boats to be on the screen all at the same time without slowing anything down.

The Sony booth also had two download spots. They looked a litle different than the ones at TGS (there were in English for starters) and had three demos each. I, obviously, chose to download the Loco Roco demo. It's unfortunately the same exact demo from TGS, which was disappointing to see after the trailer from the press conference showed all these other different cool-looking Loco Roco dudes that we hadn't seen before, but then again it's Loco Roco, and you can't be sad when you're playing Loco Roco.

There were also other playable games on the floor, some of which I had played, others like Tourist Trophy and Okami I hadn't, but to prove the power of suggestion, I was totally not interested in either of them because I hadn't seen them at the press conference. Go figure.