Sony's E3 press conference, slated to start at 4 p.m. PST, didn't.

About an hour later, the press conference kicked off, and unfortunately for me, the live video feed from GameSpot.com was listen-only for the first portion. Luckily, they resolved it before the game clips.

Sony Computer Entertainment America President Kaz Hirai made expected jabs about the PS3 not being "an incremental upgrade of the platform", and represented the "best of breed in home computer entertainment".

PS2

There was an impressive recap of the PS2 shipping history and status and software -- pretty applicable for an insider game industry conference. Sony was making a point -- they're the big dogs and the cash cow for Sony, and for third-party developers. Hirai said there will also be be 216 new PS2 titles in 2006.

PSP

Another impressive recap from Hirai here, with 17 million sold to date, which is almost 1 million units per month since launch. They then showed a video montage if upcoming PSP titles, including the impressive looking Dark Mirror, Gangs of London, and Killzone: Liberation.

Sony also announced they were extending their PS2 Greatest Hits program to the PSP, starting with 5 titles.

Hirai touted the PSP's firmware upgrades, which allow for Web browsing, Flash player, and RSS feeds, and said they'll be adding RSS video and VoIP functionality. Calling the PSP "the whole package" and using examples of downloading MP3 playlists and podcasts, Sony is obviously positioning the PSP as the iPod killer, and let folks know that if they brough their PSP to the show, they were going to get downloads -- including assets from the press conference.

Sony then showed a video montage of interviews with PSP gamers from New York, London, Australia, China, Japan, Mexico, where they hyped the PSP, and talked about how the PS3 was going to be the end-all-be all to gamers.

PS3

Face it, this is what people came to see.

Sony Online's Prez started with the PS3 background and technical stats. He verified the gigabit ethernet port is still there, as is 1080p HDTV dispaly and the removable hard drive, which will ship standard with all PS3s (no "Core"/"Premium" SKU split crap).

There was a lot of time spent on the full backwards compatibility for the PS2 and PSOne, and said the PSP will be able to interact with the PS3 via wireless, USB, and MemoryStick.

Understandably, given the optical disc format wars, a lot of time was spent on Blu-Ray, and its features, and how, historically, PS2 upsold the DVDs over CD-ROMS, and by implication, PS3 will do the same for Blu-Ray.

They showed the PS3, which will ship in "clear" and "black", with the latter pretty slick.

And they said the final PS3 dev kits are shipping now -- 6 months before launch. And all E3 playable PS3 content was running on these final dev kits -- which is different than Microsoft and partners running demos on alpha or pre-alpha kits at last year's E3.

Next, Sony Worldwide president Phil Harrison came out to sell the import of the PS3, and to introduce the creator of the Gran Tourismo franchise who introduced an E3 prototype of Gran Tourismo HD -- playable GT4 assets boosted to PS3 quality, which becomes the minimum target for development (1920x1080p and 60fps -- 3 times the assets and bandwidth of current broadcast HDTV, and 12 times the current GT4 on PS2).

They also did a Gran Tourismo retrospective to show the growth of the franchise -- GT1, GT4, then the GTHD -- obviously to show how impressive the latter is.

Next up was Dr. Richard Marx, the creator of the Eye Toy, and the next gen merger of the Eye Toy, real-world battle games, and the PS3 -- which was amazingly impressive and looked fun.

Sony said all clips shown from PS3 games during the press conference will be available at launch.

Hirai retook the stage to talk about the online service for the PS3, and talked again about his "air conditioning" analogy -- once considered after market, but now a necessity. He also said it would be free to all PS3 users. Hirai then booted up the original Ridge Racer for PSOne on a Memory Stick -- playing on the PSP (which seemed a little disjointed for the online conversation). He did bring it back to the online conversation in talking about Xbox Live-like prepaid cards.

Phil Harrison came back on stage to show the PS3 interface for the Sony online service (like Xbox Live Marketplace.

There were a lot of other cool features in the interface, like the SingStar interface with PS3, and being able to browse songs (via the Sony network and SingStore.

Harrison did showcase some subtle things that are cool in their version of the marketplace (like availlable funds, spending limits tied to parental controls, etc.).

A Genji II demo was next up, which looked like an incredibly awesome next gen version of a Dynasty Warriors-eque game (not like that crappy Dynasy Warriors 5 Empires for the Xbox 360. I still think Ninety-Nine Nights is going to kick it's butt. Oh, and the camera in the demo sucked, which must have been kind of embarrassing.

Moving to the 21st Century, Harrison showed Formula 1, and a cool integration with the PSP, where the PSP became a wing mirror, which is a new view, and a concrete example of interactivity between the platforms.

One of lst year's darlings of E3 was Heavenly Sword, and the playable build at the conference showed a lot of polish -- viloent and stylish.

Part 2 of the Sony Press Conference shortly ...