Sony Showcases New PS3, PS2 Software

In addition to revelations about PlayStation 3 licensees and PlayStation Portable news, Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated showed off a number of trailers for upcoming software at its recent Japanese press conference. Somewhat surprisingly, the future PlayStation 2 lineup is even more robust than the number of PlayStation 3 games on display, in contrast to Microsoft, whose final announced first-party title for the Xbox has already been released, with the company devoting the vast majority of its efforts on the upcoming Xbox 360. The star of the show on the PlayStation 2 front was a new RPG from Level-5, the developers of Dark Cloud 2 and Dragon Quest VIII. Rogue Galaxy, its new project, centers around a young space pirate, and boasts an impressive cel-shading engine that improves on the developer's existing graphics capabilities. The game will be released in Japan in December, with no U.S. date announced. Apart from Rogue Galaxy, brief trailers were shown for the following PS2 games: Biohazard 4, Code Age Commanders, Devil Summoner, Dragon Ball Z, Final Fantasy VII Dirge of Cerberus, Final Fantasy XII, Grandia III, Gundam, Kingdom Hearts II, Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence, Naruto, Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, Phantasy Star Universe, Ratchet & Clank: Deadlocked, Siren 2, Tales of Legendia, Wanda and the Colossus, Winning Eleven 9, Momtaro 15, and Let's Make a Professional Baseball Team 3. As for the PlayStation 3 trailers, some were simply those which had already debuted alongside the console at E3 2005. Bandai's Gundam trailer got another airing, for example, as did Koei's Dynasty Warriors video. New real-time demos included Factor 5's Lair, a fantasy flight game with dragons, and Endless Saga from Webzen, in which a voluptuous female warrior played with a butterfly. From Software's Project Force was the lone in-game engine demo running. Its trailer depicted a mech combat game running at 60 frames per second, with detailed, high-resolution destructible environments. Afterwards, video of Capcom's Biohazard 5 surfaced, showing the same scenes already depicted in Weekly Famitsu, except in motion. The PlayStation 3 is still scheduled for a simultaneous Japanese and U.S. launch in Spring 2006; SCE CEO Ken Kutaragi remarked that the machine would be "expensive," though did not nail down a specific amount - recent unconfirmed estimates from Merrill Lynch of Japan calculated initial manufacturing costs at around 54,000 yen, or $494 USD, and suggested the console might retail for 44,800 yen ($410).