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PlayStation Experience 2017: Summary & Trailers

This years PlayStation Experience was vastly different from the previous shows. We were told previously to keep our expectations low, with the confirmation that some announcements had been pushed forward to Paris Games Week, and others being put on hold for E3 2018. The new style to the opening of PSX was more of a developer panel. A representative of some of Sony’s first party studios came out to give some details and information on their current project. No concrete release dates were ever dropped out though.

So here’s how PSX 2017 went.

The first game that Shawn introduces us to is a VR game called Firewall: Zero Hour. It’s essentially Rainbow Six Siege but VR.

Continuing with VR, Shawn announces that there will be a free update for The Last Guardian and a free update for Wipeout Omega Collection. Last Guardian update due this year and Wipeout VR due next year.

Herman Hulst from Guerrilla Games comes to the stage and takes a loud applause. He discusses how long Horizon Zero Dawn was in development. 7 years of development for the game.
There’s some jabs as EA as the host asks the crowd, “So who loves single player games?”
Corey Barlog is out next to represent God of War, He tip toes around the release date of GOW. He says early 2018. The new GOW title is the longest in the franchise and could take between 30-35 hours to complete.

There’s a nod at the previous nights Game Awards, and another look at Dreams from Media Molecule. Sionhan Reddy comes to the stage. There is no concrete date for Dreams other than 2018. A BETA is confirmed but again no date. This game has been in development for 7 years.

Quantic Dreams developer is out next to the panel. They play Detroit live on stage. This has a huge impact on the crowd who wake up now. Part of the demo sees Connor walk past a broken fish tank with an option to save the flailing fish on the floor. The crowd naturally cheer and scream to save the fish.

Detroit is absolutely incredible, the demo that’s played out is so damn intense. The crowd loved it. The demo we saw had multiple different endings and ways it could have panned out. Additional clues and things could have been investigated which changes potential selections and out comes.
The script for Detroit is over 200 pages. The game is at the end of development now with 1000s of different story permutations. Detroit is another game that took 7 years to develop. Its out in Spring 2018.

Corey jokingly questions why he only gets 5 years development time, while the rest of the panel gets 7 years for their games.
Trailer for a new game is next. It’s called Donut County, it’s coming in 2018, and the trailer is hilarious.

Another new game, this game features a VR mode. It’s a psychedelic looking underwater adventure game, you play as 2 dolphins named Jupiter and Mars. Other than that I have no idea what’s going on.

Onto some 3rd party reveals. Bazblue Cross Tag battle coming 2018
Soul Caliber 6 trailer from the Game Awards is shown
Monster Hunter World trailer. The end of the trailer features Mega-Man rather randomly, but that aside it looks awesome.

Next to join the panel is Andrew House and Mark Cerny. They’re discussing the 27 years service Andrew has had with PlayStation. Before bringing out a special guest they show the Death Stranding trailer from the Game Awards.

Kojima takes to the stage to rapturous applause

Mark Cerny jokes that after playing Death Stranding for 4-5 hours, the trailers start to make sense.
Andrew House got to meet Kojima for the first time years ago through terrible circumstances. Someone stole some of Kojimas code from an E3 show, and Andrew House was the unfortunate person who had to tell Kojima. It would appear their relationship went upwards from the initial meeting.
The trailer for Death Stranding was captured in real time on PS4 Pro. The part of the trailer with Norman Reddus in the water is actually in a playable state now.
Mark asks Kojima how Death Stranding came to be? There’s an awkward silence and Mark says we can skip that, I think we all know the answer to that. He says it in a joking manner, a slight dig at the Konami & Silent Hills fiasco.
Kojima received various offers from people when he became an independent developer. He wanted the freedom to work on his own game. He said in discussions with executives normally, things such as age group, audience and budget are all things that executives want to know before green lighting a game idea. In this instance once Kojima had pitched the idea of Death Stranding to Andrew House, there were no questions from Andrew, just a simple “OK!”.
Cerny & Kojima give a nice little shout out to Guerrilla Games for the Decima engine that Death Stranding runs on.

And we’re onto the final tease now. The host says to Shawn Layden, “Before we wrap up Shawn, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s on your t-shirt?” Shawn laughs, the crowd get hype. Shawn explains the beginning of the T-Shirt tease from Crash Bandicoot many PSX ago and the Wipeout shirt he had on before the announcement of Wipeout Omega a year back. This year the shirt has a grave stone on it that reads “Sir Dan”. The crowd lose their shit as Shawn announces that Medievil is getting remastered for the PS4.

And that was the end of the main show. However the point of PSX this year was for various developer panels. So even now they are still on going, so i’ll try to fit as much more as I can find onto the bottom here. I won’t put the trailers up for all of the listed below, but a few.