Sony back in stride at videogame extravaganza in Los Angeles

People queued for hours to try Sony’s next-generation gaming handset or peeks at a 3D Drake’s Uncharted videogame being released later this year.

Crowds thronged Sony booths each day of an Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) extravaganza as the Japanese firm put its back to an embarrassing hack of its online network for games, films and music.

“It’s been a great E3 for us,” Sony official Julie Webber said as videogame industry insiders tried upcoming titles and the PlayStation Vita gaming handset.

“There has been a lot of buzz,” she continued. “We’re 100 per cent committed to consumer satisfaction and safety with PlayStation Network, but this is our chance to really show all the new content and hardware we have coming out.”

Sony introduced PS Vita and blockbuster 3D console titles at E3 as it sought to shake off the stigma of cyberattacks on its system.

PSN was shut down after hackers broke in and looted user data. Sony brought the system back online gradually the week before E3 after hardening its defenses. “Despite all the craziness, it was a very proud moment, in a way, to be working there because there was so much resilient focus on how to make this right and bring back the best entertainment experience,” PSN senior director Susan Panico said in an interview.

“A lot of people in the company hunkered down for days working on a 24-seven basis to resolve this,” she continued. “I was proud of the way people pulled together.” Content is king when it comes to entertainment, and Sony believes its troves of movies, music and videogames put it in a position to keep and win fans of its devices and services.

“We have movie studios, record labels, games and consumer electronics technology,” she said. “We see PSN as a backbone of entertainment that ultimately transcends Sony devices.” PSN boasts about 77 million registered accounts, with nearly half of those belonging to people in North America.

Ms Panico saw current trends in playing games on smartphones or tablet computers as complementing videogame consoles which offer more cinematic and sophisticated experiences and link to the internet “cloud”.

“Certainly every form of entertainment competes for people’s time,” Panico acknowledged. “What’s great about smartphones or tablets is they are gateways into gaming when people want more immersive, deeper experiences.”

A “holy grail” for the videogame industry is to have content converge in the “cloud” where it can be accessed through arrays of Internet-linked devices, according to Ms Panico.

“For the foreseeable future there is a place in the living room for consoles like the PlayStation,” she said. “You’re not going to download one of these games on the infrastructure in the United States, that’s for sure.”

In a bid to make 3D more ubiquitous, Sony will release a 61-centimeter display for the format bundled with special glasses, an HDMI cable and a copy of the coming Resistance 3 videogame at a package price of $500.

A PS Vita model that connects to the Internet only using Wi-Fi will be priced at $249, while a version of the gadget featuring 3G connectivity to telecom data services will be priced at $299.

PS Vita is due to launch in Japan, Europe and the US by the end of the year.