Sony’s E3 Booth Specs And Rumor Roundup

Techradar has recently noticed the layout for E3 2009, which is the 15th Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3 is an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry. It is used by many video game developers to show off their upcoming games and game-related hardware. E3 2009 is scheduled for June 2-4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. E3 2009 will be greatly expanded in terms of size from previous years, it has been reopened to all qualified computer and gaming audience. Sony will have the largest booth at E3, which will be located in the West Hall. What Sony is planning to announce at E3 has been the topic of many news and blog postings lately. Let’s take a look at what people are saying.

One of the most popular Playstation stories recently is the slim PS3, which has been a pretty active rumor stemming all the way back to early spring of 2008. Engadget reported the story again more than a year later, stating that a slimmer, less expensive PS3 would debut at this year’s E3. Things heated up even more when the next day Engadget posted pictures of a Chinese production sample of a new, slimmer 120GB PS3. However, when I look at the pictures I just see something that looks like a cheap Chinese knockoff. It doesn’t even look like a Sony product, even in its pre-fab state. The main Playstation 3 font is different, and it doesn’t seem like a logical evolution that Sony Design would bring to the table. However, the cease and desist letter Engadget received afterwards makes me wonder..

Does Sony really have the money to completely re-engineer the console and make a slimmer version? I doubt it, and the slim PS2 didn’t come out till four years after the original console debuted anyways. We’re going to side with IGN this time and simply believe that the most logical thing Sony would do is offer a price-cut, probably in the vicinity of $50 – $100. IGN doesn’t think $50 is alot, but we do, especially if they were to offer a new bundle or larger hard drive.

Another major hardware rumor is the PSP Go!, which we find to be very likely. Here is what IGN has to say about it:

Rumors are abound that it’ll feature a touch-screen interface and no UMD drive. Instead, all games will be downloadable. Given this, we’re going to say that Sony revamps the PlayStation Store a bit and includes all existing PSP titles available on Day 1 for download. And, there will be some way to convert your existing UMD titles to digital versions, though hopefully the process will be painless.

The only thing that I think would be a stretch here is the complete offering of all PSP titles at the Playstation Store, which would probably be a gradual process, but everything else sure makes sense. We just wish that the next version of the PSP had multi-touch and an OLED screen, but then again that would probably punt the price into the stratosphere.

IGN offered some other thoughts about what might be happening with Sony at E3, and we found them very interesting. This includes talk about White Knight Chronicles, Gran Turismo 5, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and God of War 3, Twisted Metal, Grand Turismo 5, and more. Check it out!