PS3 Fanboy

At the Develop Industry Excellence Awards, the European segment of Sony walked away with the most prestigious award available at said ceremony. When given the award, the statement given for Sony's excellence was described as follows: "capping 12 months which have seen the firm deliver a new hardware format that has inspired developers around the world to make cutting-edge next generation games." That's right -- the PlayStation 3 is getting the clout for developers worldwide making fantastic new titles.

Other Sony products receiving awards were SCEE/Evolution Studios for best new IP with Motorstorm, and Zoe Mode got the same nod for their PSP game Crush. There were other awards for many other titles, but as far as Sony goes, this is about the extent of their excellence. We give them similar props because, well, we're sure next year they'll get an award for LittleBigPlanet. It's inevitable. Anyone care to make a wager?

MotorStorm has been released. It's good. Evolution Studios made it. They're good. Now that we have the backstory out of the way, let's get down and dirty with the CEO of Evolution Studios, Martin Kenwright, and talk about how people should approach the PS3 and the future of gaming, including downloadable content.

How should people approach development of games on the PS3?

• "I think you've got to think big now, or go home. We're in an industry full of hits, and an average product isn't good enough. You have to find an edge and I think when you look at the billions being invested in hardware, at the end of the day it's only as good as the games that being developed on that platform...You do need this scale and scope to stay at the top tier of games development."

More development coming? Downloadable content?

• "We hope to show, not tell, and this is a curtain-raiser. I know that there's some amazing things we can do, and I don't want to go off and promise a load of stuff that we can't deliver, but what we can say in terms of graphics and processing power [is that] we are only hitting a fraction of what we could be doing. Our motto is, "If anyone can, Evo can," and we want to push the hardware."
• "We looked at [downloadable content] and we said that we wanted to do something fresh and exciting, underpromise and overdeliver if you will. We want to set a precedent for DLC basically. We already have 12 cars running together without any latency or slowdown, and that's a remarkable achievement beyond anything else that exists on any format. I think the experience will be great and we hope to bring you as much new content and game modes as possible."

There's a lot more discussed, but it's mostly industry babble and mostly reiteration of stuff we already know. What would you guys like to see in some downloadable content for MotorStorm?

To be brief, MotorStorm has become the top-selling PS3 game so far in Japan, shooting up to #1 on Japanese sales charts. Not saying too much, since there are a multitude of games sitting on the shelves but a severe lack of systems to play them on. Even so, by December 10th, MotorStorm sold 8,000 copies and has probably passed the 10,000 mark by now.

If the game has done so well in Japan, where off-road racing (actual off-roading) and western-developed titles don't really do well by themselves, then how will the rest of the world react? Good question, but we all know the answer. This is going to be a fun game and many people will grab it. Argue about graphics, the SIXAXIS, or whatever, but the truth is, this is a great showcase title for the PS3. Especially for the European debut! This should be good news for all of us, so let's pop out that bottle of New Year's champagne early, eh? No noisemakers, please. Those suck.