The Tokyo Games Show kicked off with a keynote speech by Kazuo Hirai, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, at 1030 local time in Japan.

There had been rumours that Mr Hirai would give further details of the new motion controller for the Playstation 3, but in the end, the event was little more than an update on the state of Sony’s various game platforms.

1120 The event is over and I’m afraid it was a bit of a disappointment. I think Sony used up its announcements with the slimline PS3 and price cuts in August. We’ll have to wait to find out more about the PS3 motion controller.

1112 They’re chatting away about 3D in games, emotion in games, controllers etc. To recap on one point from earlier, the PSN video store will be expanded to Europe, which I believe is fresh information. We did not learn much new about the motion controller for the PS3, in contrast to Microsoft, which has announced widespread game publisher support for its Project Natal controller.

1106 I’m going to stop updating so regularly unless there’s something worth the effort.

1105 Mr Hirai is just back from the US. He has jet lag. The Beatles: Rock Band was doing well in the US.

1103 And that’s it. Mr Hirai has finished speaking, and so far as I could catch, we heard very little that was new. There is now going to be a dialogue between Mr Hirai and Mr Asami from Nikkei Business Publications, one of the organisers of TGS.

1101 Playstation Home, the virtual world which is part of the PSN, gets an obligatory mention. We’re running out of Playstation features to talk about, which I hope will mean that we hear something new.

1059 Now the Playstation Network (the online service for Sony’s consoles). There have been 29m accounts set up, 600m downloads, and Y25bn in sales to date. Now talking about video on the PSN - support for the BBC iPlayer.

1057 Now we’ve jumped to the Playstation 2. 138m units sold since launch. This isn’t very exciting so far.

1054 Onto the new PSP Go which launches next week. There will be 700 titles available at launch in the West and 450 in Japan.

1052 Now we’ve jumped onto the Playstation Portable. 52m sold around the world to date. Now showing a video of upcoming PSP titles.

1050 Mr Hirai just says Spring 2010 for the motion controller launch date so nothing new there.

1048 Yes. Mr Hirai is holding up a PS3 motion controller.

1047 We’re rattling through the main PS3 features and peripherals. Blu-Ray, Dualshock controller, and the EyeToy camera. Are we building up to something on controllers?

1045 Now it’s a video of upcoming PS3 games. Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Infamous (not yet out in Japan), Yakuza 4, Final Fantasy 13, Heavy Rain. Some good stuff, but nothing new that I spotted. Canned applause on the sound track.

1043 One million PS3s have been sold in three weeks since the price cuts on the console, Mr Hirai says. “We don’t believe that the price should simply be reduced automatically over time,” he says.

1040 The core of PlayStation is games, Mr Hirai reassures the gaming audience who aren’t that interested in all this social stuff.

1038 Mr Hirai is talking about some of Sony’s successful user-generated content and social games. Little Big Planet, which allowed users to create their own levels, and karaoke game Singstar, but there’s little new here.

1036 Mr Hirai is talking about the increasing importance of network connections for video game consoles. It’s a big theme for the industry. Mr Hirai has eight separate themes for online: communicate, share etc, but I’m afraid I couldn’t get them all.

1033 Playstation’s glorious history. “Heartfelt appreciation and thanks.”

1031 Mr Hirai is up. Hello, happy to be here, etc

1030 Right on time, the lights go down, and the loud music starts.

1029 So anyway, what are we expecting from Sony today? The talk is that we will hear a lot about motion control, possibly including a release date, price, and game support for the Playstation 3 motion controller.

1027 Every Tokyo correspondent’s heart sinks when they hear that an event is in Makuhari, because it is miles from the centre of town, built on a rather bleak stretch of reclaimed land. This is the journey I endured this morning. http://tinyurl.com/lf29d3. Took me two hours.

1025 The Tokyo Games Show is the Japanese videogame industry’s main annual event, showing off its big software titles before Christmas. It’s held in the Makuhari Messe, out in Chiba prefecture, to the east of Tokyo.

1022 Welcome to the FT’s live coverage of the Sony keynote at TGS. The hall is filling up, my 3G connection appears to be working, and the laptop has 90mins of battery left, so we should be set fair. We’re due to start at 1030, and since this is Japan, we probably will.

September 24, 2009 2:08am in Tech | Comment