Sony E3 Conference Snippets

Sony's E3 conference was held yesterday at 19:30 BST. As with the Microsoft conference I've extracted some interesting titbit's of information.

Unfortunately a European price cut for the PS3 was not mentioned but apparently there will be some sort of announcement tomorrow.

PS2 Snippets
Now has an installed base of over 118 million, thus according to Jack Tretton (CEO and President of Sony America) makes it the most popular console of all time.

160 new games for the PS2 are scheduled for the US this fiscal year.

PSP Snippets
Weekly sales of the PSP have gone up by 90% since the introduction of a price cut.

A New version of PSP was unveiled and it will be available worldwide in September. Although the revision looks very similar to the existing model it's apparently 33% lighter and 19% slimmer. It also makes use of a more efficient battery and loading times will be a lot faster too. It also incorporates a new bit of functionality in that it can now be hooked up to a TV (Sony Bravia) and output any of it's content (videos, photos, games) directly to the screen.

The new slimmer PSP will be available in the regular black and the new "ice silver" colours in an entertainment pack which includes a 1GB memory stick. There will also be a "Star Wars Battlefront" entertainment pack which features a white PSP emblazoned with Darth Vader on the back. Both packs will retail for 199.99 USD and will be available in the US from September. Sony Europe and Sony Japan have yet to announce pricing and packs that will be available.

140 new games are scheduled for the PSP in the US this fiscal year.

PSP UMD sales are up by 35% since 2006.

PS3 Snippets
80 first party games are in development worldwide.

The PlayStation Network now has 2 million registered users, 950 thousand of which are from North America and the service has seen 20 million downloads.

PlayStation "Home" can now have client software running on mobile phones. The example given will allow you to take pictures with your mobile and have them sent directly to your "Home" lobby.

Sales of 60GB PS3 have doubled in North America at Sony's top five retailers since the cut was announced on Monday and Sony are going to ship 11 million units by the end of the year. There's no news as yet of a price cut for Europe.

Unreal Tournament 3 was announced as exclusive for the PS3 until the end of the year.

Metal Gear solid 4 was reconfirmed as being exclusive to PS3. Hideo Kojima has also stated that MGS4 would be the last in the series. The game is due for release in spring 2008.

The PS3 has helped the sales of Blu-ray and it is now approximately outselling HD-DVD by a ratio of 2:1.