Sony’s big press conference at E3 2006 quickly became legendary. The awkward, confusing, hilarious and stilted press release – touting the PSP and revealing the price of the PlayStation 3 – was easily one of the company’s most memorable, albeit unintentional, and brought an early, viral YouTube video memorize the most absurd moments as well as other common mockery moments. And thanks to the preservation work of documentary filmmaker Danny O’Dwyer, you can now watch the broadcast in stunning 4K resolution.
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Through his crowdfunding documentary channel, Noclip, O’Dwyer has slowly unearthed and published decades of video game history. Out of Gameplay from unreleased titles to a scrapped interview with 10-year-old Hideo Kojima to never-before-seen trailers, he has everything. And on July 21, he uploaded Sony’s two-hour E3 2006 presentation in the highest possible quality: 2160p at 60 frames per second. Y’all, this is a time capsule worth seeing for the first time if you’ve never seen it, or reliving it in HD if you’ve seen it. Trust me you will have a great time. So buckle up and let’s recap this silly conference for a moment.
The presentation included some cool games
During the presentation some pretty cool games were shown. Siphon Filter: Dark Mirrorthe fifth installment in the now-dormant third-person stealth shooter series, was unveiled alongside the PS3 launch title Genji: Days of the Blade. The best God of War Clone, Heavenly Sword, was unveiled with cinematic gameplay. And we got our first glimpse of what would become of it Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a game that later featured one of Naughty Dog’s most iconic IPs. As far as games go, Sony’s E3 2006 press conference caused quite a stir.
The awkward moments were unforgettable
But between those gameplay demos and teaser trailers, there were some really stilted moments. Then-President and CEO Kaz Hirai tried to cheer the crowd by shouting, “This is Riiiidge Racer!” Genji: Days of the Blade The presenter introduces the game’s historical roots before battling a giant enemy crab with a weak point that you could hit to inflict massive damage. A random guy on the street is talking about how it will hurt if he hits you in PS3 games because “I don’t know.” It was a crazy presentation that was as legendary as it was hilarious.
The price of the PlayStation 3 was a ‘whoop’
As the presentation kicked off with Hirai speaking of the fantastic success of the PS2, the best-selling console of all time, the ending was a serious dud. After all the bragging about the previous generation and showing off great games for the next, Hirai revealed the price of the PS3: $500 for a 20GB console and $600 for a 60GB console. The announcement was great fun, perhaps because the Xbox 360, which had been out for months, was significantly cheaper. It was a confusing price that made me wonder, but The PS3 still ended up selling slightly more units than the Xbox 360 over its entire lifespan.
Saving footage that could have been lost forever
In an email to my cityO’Dwyer detailed the work that went into uploading this memorable press conference. He was saved onto two HDCAM tapes by a video game website and sent to the landfill before O’Dwyer rescued them. He said he did “essentially nothing” to the footage, just ripped it off the tapes and converted it to HD.
“The process is pretty simple. We use a professional HDCAM cassette deck to retrieve the signal [Series Digital Interface (SDI)]’ said O’Dwyer. “I used a converter to convert that to HDMI and used a high quality capture device to record it. Once I have it on a PC I export a 4K version for YouTube (to access the higher bitrates available) and a 1080p version for the archive as that is the native resolution and we can upload the file to the archive without it being re-rendered.”
When asked why he thinks Sony’s 2006 E3 presentation became so infamous, O’Dwyer theorized that memes were much rarer back then and phrases as simple as “Riiiidge Racer” and “giant enemy crab” lived on in our minds easily rent-free. Whatever the forces behind it, conferences like this are some of the coolest bits of video game history he’s seen since he started preserving the “a few thousand tapes” that were almost lost forever.
Of other favorites, O’Dwyer said, “The Nintendo Spaceworld Demo Another reason is that it’s such popular footage that nobody had a clean copy of it,” said O’Dwyer. “My personal favorite might be this Knights of the Old Republic E3 Demo that had never been seen before. Especially considering where this franchise is at.” [A remake announced in September 2021 has been indefinitely delayed.] “I know the fandom loved analyzing this video. A few days ago I also found a cache of E3 2004 press kits full of screenshots and videos. That’s why we come across exciting new things every day.”
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What O’Dwyer is doing is incredibly important work. Consider that 87 percent of classic games are lost over timeEspecially since old hardware is hard to find and difficult to maintain, it’s comforting to know that there are people working to preserve video game history. Because if we don’t remember where we’ve been, we can never know where we’re going.
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