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Sony at GDC 2006 - Kratos, Ducks, downloadable content and more

Sony's GDC Keynote was yesterday, and . . they really didn't say much. Most of the keynote consisted of regurgitating and/or confirming things we already knew from last week's press conference or from even earlier press conferences. Anyway, here's the rundown:

• God of War 2 exists, and is coming for the PS2 "Soon". Here's a shaky-cam version of the trailer. It makes me sad that the real cheering started when Kratos is seen falling off one of David Jaffe's patented horrible top-down balance puzzles. Damn you, David Jaffe.
• Ducks! They had a new duck demo running on PS3 hardware. I love the duck demo. This is, I think, the third or fourth incarnation of the duck demo. Sadly, covert footage of the duck demo has not yet surfaced.
• PS3 is really seriously coming in November. Everywhere. Sony totally means it this time. The controller is also apparently being sent back to the drawing-board. I'm glad they decided to dump the batarang, I haven't heard of anyone actually enjoying that thing.
• Sony is jumping on the downloadable content bandwagon. Kutaragi touched on this last week, but this week we got it in a bit more depth. Sony is starting a whole "E-Distribution Initiative" to encourage developers to start thinking about and talking to Sony about how they can make games that'll have episodic content, exclusive online downloadable content, and even stuff like games that are exclusively available for download. While it does sorta just sound like "Xbox Live: Playstation Edition", it's worth keeping in mind here that Sony is planning on having this kind of content for both the PS3 and the PSP.
• Second-parrty developers are continuing their Sony franchise games, and the world is shocked. Preliminary trailers for PS3 insallments of Ratchet & Clank and The Getaway were both shown.

That's sadly just about all that was announced from the Sony camp. The GDC has never been a big press hype event, but in recent years it's gotten the feel of E3-lite. Except . . really lite. What gets shown is neat, but never really earthshattering, everybody hangs onto their megaton cards until E3, which is presently a short 7 weeks away.

Sources: 1up, CNN

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