Persona 5, Bloodborne dated, Dragon Quest: Heroes - all the news from Sony's pre-TGS presser
Tokyo Game Show 2014 season is now officially open, kicking off with a livestreamed presentation from Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. All the news below.
TGS itself doesn't start until September 18, but Sony got into the mood early this year with the press briefing embedded below.
As promised, we got a slew of We're hoping to see some new PS4 announces as well as plenty of Vita news. Scroll down for everything.
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
New Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia president Atsushi Morita opened the presentation, promising details of both PS4 and Vita games.
The Vita went first. The first to be shown was a Spike Chunsoft game, Zettai Zetsubou Shoujo: Dangan-Ronpa - Another Episode. It's a spin-off and interquel to Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, so might come west. We've had no word of that yet, though.
Next was Phantasy Star Nova, with a new trailer for the action RPG. It hits Japan in November but has not been confirmed for international release. Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3 was next; it's coming to 3DS and Vita in Japan in December. Amazingly, there's no western release date.
A few new Vita games followed in quick succession, of which two were particularly interesting. The first was a Way of the Samurai title, and the second was Luminous Arc Infinity, which looks like a high fantasy RPG, from Marvellous Entertainment. There was also a new Gundam game in there somewhere.
Sony then tried to murder me with a rage stroke by announcing a whole bunch of games designed to appeal to women are on the way to Vita. These include Love Otome and another romance game. I was busy shouting and throwing things at the screen.
The Vita will soon support themes, downloadable from the PlayStation Store. Freedom Wars and Danganronpa examples were shown, but other titles are on the way, including Phantasy Star Nova. Themes change the background, icons and even music. Themes will become available as of firmware update 3.30, which was not dated.
Sony also promised new Vita hardware models with engraving, themed to various Vita games. There's also going to be a light pink and white version in November, for Love Otome.
Sony said that 100 new Vita games will be released in Japan by the end of March 2015, bringing the grand total in that region to 600 releases to date. It then showed a montage of upcoming Vita titles.
PS4
The PS4 section kicked off with a Destiny trailer and a video message from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons.
Ubisoft then turned up to talk about Assassin's Creed: Unity. There was a trailer. We might have seen it before; it's September and I barely recognise my own face at this point. I assume we'll have all these trailers by the end of the TGS. The Crew was next up. There was a video for that, too. The Japanese beta test is exclusive to PS4. No further details were given.
Ubisoft then showed a trailer for Far Cry 4, which sounds pretty great in Japanese; really OTT. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt followed, and do you know? It actually sounds better than in English. Geralt would make a great samurai if that weren't totally inappropriate cultural appropriation, Brenna.
Oh hey so then Shuhei Yoshida, SCE Worldwide Studios boss, turned up next, reiterating that the PS4 has sold 10 million units worldwide, and has multiple 1 million unit selling titles. He was wearing a suit with a totally inappropriate print for broadcast and will have to apologise to everyone at Sony in the morning.
The next trailer shown was for a new Everybody's (Hot Shots) Golf. I only found this out afterwards when Yoshida started talking again, because it was delightfully baffling. PS4's first Everybody's Golf title will be revealed in more detail in the New Year, but it sounds like it might have a bit of a social slant.
LittleBigPlanet 3 was next, confirming a Japanese launch nobody anywhere doubted for a moment. There was a new trailer, I think; again, we'll get this later, don't worry.
Q-Games and SCE Studio Japan's new collaboration, downloadable title The Tomorrow Children, was shown next. We saw this at gamescom. It was one of Pat's highlights, actually. Yoshida talked a little bit about the game's weird hybrid single-player and multiplayer model, which is pretty exciting. A limited time beta test is coming to Japan on September 17, for PS Plus subscribers only.
The next title shown was The Order: 1886, with yet another trailer. Was it new? I have no idea. I don't think so, but E3 and gamescom have become one blur of shrivelled eyeballs to me. If it was, we'll see it in a few days, so.
Next we saw Bloodborne, which was dated for February 5 in Japan. Expect western launch soon after. A new trailer was shown - stay tuned, you know the score by now - and a limited edition was announced but not detailed.
Sony then moved on to talking about Project Morpheus, inviting TGS attendees to check it out and showing off some strange project. Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada is involved somehow.
Back to really real games then, with Kingdom Under Fire 2 and Let It Die, which as you recall is the project formerly known as Lily Bergamot, from Grasshopper Manufacture.
Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War & Nightmare got a trailer, which made me very happy, as did Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. Another bit of news from this rapid fire trailer barrage: Disgaea 5 is coming to PS4 in 2015.
Hideo Kojima showed up next to talk about P.T., which as we all now know is a teaser for Silent Hills; it has been downloaded over 1 million times. Kojima confirmed that he wanted players to use the Share function and Twitch to solve the puzzle. He confirmed that it took four hours to solve, much faster than Kojima's estimate of one week. Although he didn't use her name, Kojima's references to a "British woman" no doubt refers to Soapywarpig, the first to finish the teaser.
After a brief discussion of Norman Reedus's motion capture, a video message from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was shown. Del Toro said he admires Kojima's work for its focus on storytelling and emotional effect. He also said he and Reedus go "way, way back", and that Silent Hill is one of del Toro's favourite series.
Kojima gave no new Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain news, instead asking fans to look forward to news out of the TGS itself.
Capcom took over from Konami to show off the new Resident Evil HD remaster. The remaster will have new, "professional" voice acting, the publisher confirmed. You may remember the early Resident Evil games had absolutely dreadful voice acting.
Surprising its most cynical fans, Capcom then produced a live action teaser to communicate the "concept" of a brand new title, which was, to nobody's surprise, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, which is due in 2015. The tagline is "Evil is Watching". The core Revelations team is back, but this time Capcom is allowing them to introduce a new story and protagonists.
More information is promised during the TGS, but Capcom said the game has a lot of "gimmicks" and there'll be something involving three screens. Or something. Exciting. There'll be some sort of interactive exhibition on the show floor and you can bet I'll play the s**t out of it and report back ASAP.
Sega tottered out of its crypt to discuss Yakuza 0, which is set in 1988, during Japan's economic period, and - oh, well. It's never coming west, ever; let's face it. It's going to have two protagonists, is a prequel and will have cross-save with Vita, PS3 and PS4.
Bandai Namco, which I will call Namco Bandai till the day I die, turned up to talk about how great its catalogue of IP is. It has all the rights to Gundam so it pretty much just rolls around in yen. The publisher's upcoming line-up includes God Eater 2: Rage Burst for PS4 and Vita.
You know what else Namco Bandai has the rights to? Dragon Ball Xenoverse and One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. The latter was announced in the latest issue of Shonen Jump, so expect details over the next week. A new Gundam game is coming, inevitably; expect it in 2015.
The new, PS4 and Xbox One version of Dead or Alive was shown next. This was announced separately over the weekend, but at least we have a chance of getting a decent quality trailer now.
A quick flurry of games were announced for Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, a new Ys release also coming to Vita, and Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force.
Next, we got a new teaser for Persona 5, confirming it's coming to PS4 as well as PS3 in 2015. Go and watch it.
At last, Sony gave a brief bit of spotlight for the PS4's new firmware update, which will add themes. It then closed off the PS4 section of the show with a lengthy montage trailer showing off PS4 games on their way to Japan, some of which we already have in the spoiled, decadent west. The credits screen was about 16 million words long. Hilarious.
Hey, so, remember the old UMD Passport scheme, allowing users to buy digital, Vita-compatible versions of PSP games for a discount if they owned the UMD version? The scheme is being extended. For Japanese users only. Again. It's very unlikely we'll benefit from this, so I tuned out.
Square Enix showed up at the last minute to present Dragon Quest Heroes. A new Dragon Quest game! For PS4! Coming in 2015! Good lord. It's being developed by Omega Force, the Dynasty Warriors team, which is now responsible for approximately 47% of all Japanese games.
The presentation closed on a bit of a downer, with Morita admitting that the Japan Asia market is lagging behind North America and Europe - but highlighting the huge lineup of games ahead and calling for local support. Sony will be seeing us at TGS 2014, apparently. I should think so.