torok on 27 October 2013
Sony conference on Brazil Game Show 2013 (Oct 27)
(Text on image: Ayrton Senna Forever)
Some interesting news in this conference. It looks that now the Brazilian game market is bigger than UK and Germany (and there are some threads about it here), but now let's see some highlights of the Sony conference:
- PlayStation Plus comes to Brazil: Sony BR launched it quietly at Oct 25 and announced at BGS. The price is R$ 100 for a year (around US$ 40), R$ 40 for 3 months or R$ 20 for a month. There are some games and themes at a discount and the following free games:
- Hotline Miami (PS3/PSVITA)
- Poker Night 2 (PS3)
- Shadow of the Colossus (PS3)
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3)
- ICO (PS3)
- Uncharted 3: Single Player Mode (PS3)
- Galaga Legions DX (PS3)
- Zen Pinball 2 Star Wars Pinball (PS3/PSVITA)
- BIT.TRIP Presents Runner 2 (PS3)
- Jet Set Radio (PS3)
- Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee HD (PS3)
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PS3)
- Little Big Planet Karting (PS3)
- Rayman Origins (PSVita)
- GTA: Liberty City Stories (PSVITA)
- WipeOut (PSVITA)
- Uncharted: Golden Abyss (PSVITA)
- Gravity Rush (PSVITA)
- Gran Turismo 6 will have special Ayrton Senna content, GT6 Senna PS3 bundle and charity: The Brazilian edition of GT6 will have an exclusive DLC with 25 modified vehicles and 1M game credits, under the "Ayrton Senna Sempre (Forever)" banner, because of the 20 years of the tragic death of the pilot inSan Marino circuit in 1994. Besides that, we will have special events to revive moments in the career of the Brazilian Formula One pilot Ayrton Senna and an exclusive PS3 GT6 bundle with the Ayrton Senna content. And part of the worldwide profit of GT6 will be donated to the Ayrton Senna Institute, a local charity institution maintened by the Senna family.
- Brazilian Indie developers on PS4: 66 Latin America developers (most Brazilian) are getting PS4 and Vita dev kits.
- PS4/Vita games on Portuguese: A lot of first party PS3 titles were on Portuguese (Last Of Us, Uncharted 3, GOW: Ascension) and that will continue on PS4. Killzone: SF, inFamous: SS for PS4 and Arkham Origins: Blackgate and Tearaway for Vita are some of them.
- PS4 will still be sold for R$ 4000 (US$ 1800): No price cut. The only good news is that Sony BR will manufacture the console locally ASAP and that will drive the price down. But it looks like the current strategy is more focused on PS3 and Vita at least for the Hollydays untill PS4 gets its national version.
My thoughts:
PS4 price is the main issue. With the national XBox One for R$ 2200, it's not good. For the long term, it's still fixable with price cuts since Brazilian market isn't much of an early adopter and PS3s and 360s for R$ 800 will still be the high sellers until 2015 at least.
PS Plus price was a nice surprise. The offers are still weak, but the games included in the first batch are good choices, specially the Vita ones, definitively a good deal. The Senna GT6 content is great and will have a massive appeal for Brazilian GT fans because of the legendary status of Senna here as the greatest national pilot ever.
The biggest surprise was the focus on Vita games, since the handheld market isn't big here and there wasn't a good support from Sony BR to distribute Vita games or localize them (most games sold here for Vita are imported).
