What Should Sony Do At E3 2014?

Sony is on a bit of a high at the moment. Their PlayStation 4 launch has been a runaway train of hardware sales success and, with over seven million units sold to eager gamers around the world, it’s showing very few signs of slowing down at all as we head into the countdown to E3 2014.

They had made some missteps through the lifetime of the PlayStation 3 which has led to a seemingly common misconception that they somehow “lost” the previous generation, but, as it happens, world-wide sales compared to the Xbox 360 seem to be as close to equal these dats.

Anything that matters for factoring in potential duplicate sales after hardware revisions and well-publicised failures (red ring or yellow light of death) is next to impossible to determine on anything other than a purely anecdotal level. So the only thing we can say with any degree of confidence that they “lost” was the war for public perception in the west. But that’s significant enough and it’s why they focussed on the west with the launch of the PS4.

That strategy has paid off for Sony, not only with the sales figures but also a slightly more open approach to their strategy and the much-lauded courting of smaller developers leading to plenty of goodwill among the press and consumers they’ll be talking to at E3.

It is now crucially important that they keep up that momentum. Here’s how I think they could do that at E3 2014.

Hold the price of the PS4

When they set the PlayStation 4 price at E3 2013, they got it right. Microsoft has struggled to claw back to equal footing with a reduction in the UK and an exclusive game bundle, but nobody has really started talking about the PS4 needing a price cut just yet. So, while price cuts are always popular, it’s not needed yet and they can probably afford to continue selling units at the current price until sales slow down, probably next year.

Cut the price of the Vita

It’s getting on a bit now and the Vita has a huge catalogue of games on the PSN to delight and entertain. There’s plenty more on the way too, with Sony’s Vita indie guru Shahid Ahmad recently talking about more than 60 in the pipeline and even more on the horizon. So it makes some sense to sell the hardware as cheaply as possible, get it into as many hands as you can and increase the customer base to whom you can sell those games.

Bundle things together

While the PS4 doesn’t need a price cut to make it attractive just yet, Sony could start to focus on adding value to the package. Bundles do that and with PlayStation Now on the horizon, adding a period of subscription to that service, PlayStation Plus and some download codes for the best known indies on the PSN would make for a relatively inexpensive bundle for Sony to put together, with plenty to make it attractive to new customers and those keen to upgrade from a PS3. Expect some Q4 flagship bundles too, with Ubisoft an obvious third party to team up with here.

Games aren’t the only thing worth bundling though – Sony should probably throw a Vita in the box at some point soon. Before the holiday sales season might be a perfect opportunity to play up the relationship between their flagship home console and its handheld sibling. Remote Play is always a talking point, but highlighting cross-play, cross-save and cross-buy titles would also make a lot of sense when talking about this potential package, too.

Thank the Vita’s Core

It might be time to cut the price of the Vita, but it’s also time to make good on some of those “console in your pocket” claims that were floating around the handheld’s launch. Plenty of people (including myself) love the Vita’s recent catalogue of smaller games and indies but there are just as many that want a new Uncharted, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet or other high-profile, big budget game to come to their Vitas.

Sony is in danger of letting the Vita just become the handheld for ported PC indie games and smaller experiences. That might not be a huge deal for the Vita but it will mean less trust from those who want AAA handheld games when (or if) Sony comes along with their next handheld console.

PlayStation Now might help invigorate the Vita, but there are plenty of options for first party games that might be a perfect fit for a return. Uncharted and Killzone are the obvious more grown up choices to see fresh handheld entries, but perhaps bringing back Parappa the Rapper and Crash Bandicoot would help sell the Vita to a slightly younger audience too.

Don’t talk too much about indies

Yes, I love smaller developers too, but it might be best to not give them too much time on stage this year. 15 minutes should be plenty to showcase that the company is still doing all it can to bring the best of the independent development scene to PlayStation and any more than that will have the AAA junkies pulling their hair out at the live stream.

The love that PlayStation has for indies is well known now, so it might be time to show that they still love the people who only buy three or four big budget blockbusters each year.

Get the games out

They should have strong showings for Uncharted and The Order: 1886, and both should be playable at the show if Sony isn’t going to have a sparse booth this year. It might be about time we saw something of the next God of War game too, and Sony Santa Monica might have one or two other smaller projects up their sleeves that could be teased or trailered.

Guerilla Games have long been rumoured to be working on something other than Killzone, so it’s about time that was shown. And following the success and subsequent PS4 refresh of The Last of Us, it might make sense to tease some kind of sequel or follow-up from Naughty Dog.

The best thing about E3 is the often the surprises it brings and with the PlayStation 4 lineup over the next year or so, I think there’s huge potential for Sony to drop some real shockers on us. Who would like to see a PS4 WipEout or MotorStorm? What about that bizarre project Media Molecule showed off at the PS4 reveal last year with the puppet band and the model sculpting? Actually, that might suit our next category a little better…

Bring Project Morpheus and its games

Who wouldn’t want to live in a ludicrously cheerful world created by the gleeful lunatics behind LittleBigPlanet? Get me inside the world with those Media Molecule tech demos and I’ll probably have Morpheus effect practically superglued to my face as soon as it’s available.

It also seems to be a system perfectly suited to survival horror and Sony have already showed a tech demo for something called The Deep that appears to be pretty tense. Perhaps we’ll see more of that and maybe we’ll even hear something about a Morpheus version of Creative Assembly’s upcoming Alien Isolation. Limited edition version to sell with a clean pair of undies, perhaps.

It also makes sense to get some kind of Morpheus support in place for anything in a first person viewpoint that Sony already has on the way. They should get Killzone: Shadow Fall and DriveClub playable, at least, to make the prospect of forking over more hard earned cash on a no doubt expensive PlayStation peripheral a little easier to bare, over the traditionally game-light launch period of these things.

What about Home, too. Sure, it wasn’t for everyone but it was incredibly popular among a certain type of PlayStation owner and the microtransaction-based economy might be enough to tempt Sony into a much more immersive version of the virtual world for their VR tech.

One more genre that seems poised to be hugely popular as consumer virtual reality hardware becomes a reality is the space combat and exploration game. I found Dust 514 to be a little dry and uninteresting but if that relationship led to another Eve spin-off – Valkyrie – making an appearance on PlayStation 4 and Morpheus, I’d forgive all.

That said, I still yearn for an X-Wing game and with EA now in charge of Disney’s Star Wars console games, perhaps that’s an option. And then there’s Elite: Dangerous, the direct descendant of the grandfather of the genre. It already looks gorgeous, but with VR support and the comfort of my sofa as I play on a PS4, it would be even more tempting.

Finally, for the Morpheus segment of the show, maybe Housemarque should be called upon? I’m not sure what they might have that would fit the technology but they made one of the first (and best) PSN games when Sony’s online store was its newest technology, they then became the first to implement trophies and one of the first to support Sony’s push for 3D popularity. Maybe a Super Stardust game in the first person, playable with Morpheus?

Don’t spend too long on the filler

They’re surely going to show off some new media partnerships. Things like exclusive DLC for an Assassin’s Creed game and a couple of new apps for streaming media need to get a mention because they’re important for Sony’s business. But they don’t need much more than that. Sony should us know that media playback is coming to a PS4 firmware update, YouTube will be added to the video share options and they’ve had some interesting chats with some people who make television. And then move on.