Sony Press Conference

Hirai has returned to the stage, and is ready to talk about PlayStation 3, starting with a review of the technical specifications -- CELL, Blu-ray and all the other nonsense we've all discussed to death on message boards over the past year. A slide appears to confirm, once again, that PS3 will have a hard drive built-in, as opposed to Microsoft's optional hardware approach.

SCE Worldwide Studios leader Phil Harrison has taken the stage, likely to discuss games. He begins about talking about the amount of work they've been putting in since last E3. "I'm really proud to share with you the fruits of those labors," he says. Looks like we're about to see some games -- finally!

Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of Gran Turismo, of Polyphony Digital has taken the stage! He's about to show a Gran Turismo HD prototype created specifically for E3 -- it's even running in 1080p! The visuals are using Gran Turismo 4 assets beefed up, and the game is currently already running at 60 frame per second, and he Yamauchi discussed how they have been optimizing for HD resolutions.

It appears the game will be playable on the show floor, though this hasn't been specifically stated. The game certainly looks impressive and a step up from the last sequel, but it doesn't appear to be blowing away anything we've seen from next-generation so far. As with many next generation games though,, the smaller details, not so much apparent on, say, a streaming video, are important.

We were first shown the Tokyo track, but before seeing another one we're talking about the menus. Average loading time was GT4 was 10-15 seconds, but here, apparently thanks to the hard drive, Gran Turismo HD has been streamlined and reduced, and Yamauchi believes players could navigate from menus to real-time gameplay in a matter of seconds. Awesome.

We're now back with Harrison and looking at the PS3's online interface. The one we're viewing is based around Warhawk. Harrison is now bringing out Singstar for PS3, which is clearly the game everyone at this conference came to check out! Harrison, however, sees this is as an example of HD, Blu-ray and online features coming together to bring games to another level. Both PS2 and PS3 versions of Singstar will be shown off at Sony's booth on Wednesday.

Sony seems to be doing what Konami missed out on Karaoke Revolution; players can go online and purchase new songs for Singstar at their leisure. They aren't ready to give out their pricing strategy, though; Harrison typed in a $0.00 when purchasing a Singstar song. The PS3 version will also introduce "My Singstar," where you're actually creating a profile around your performances and prefere

Ken Kutaragi is out showing off the last PlayStation controller, and basically looks like a sliver version of the Dual Shock 2. What's different? Sony has basically taken Nintendo's idea of a movable controller, and introduced the gyroscope technology into the PlayStation 3 controller. Yes, you read that right.