You can now watch Sony’s disastrous E3 2006 presentation in glorious 1080P. It’s the highest video quality that the presentation has ever been recorded in.
Over on the Noclip Game History Archive channel, the Noclip team uploaded the nearly 2-hour long PlayStation conference to YouTube. According to the video’s description, it was sourced from two HDCAM’s that were recording the source broadcast feed. There are two minutes of the presentation somewhere in the middle that are still missing, but Noclip is currently on the hunt to find a tape that could have it.
Sony’s legendary E3 2006 Press Conference now available in 1080p, courtesy of Noclip https://t.co/DAVj5W2Lez pic.twitter.com/pxA0q8YxOE
— Wario64 (@Wario64) July 21, 2023
The reason this particular press conference was so infamous for Sony is because of how Sony positioned the upcoming PlayStation 3 at the time, as well as the various memes that cropped up surrounding it. It was revealed that the 60GB PS3 would be $600 at launch, which was the same price as both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii put together. This gave birth to the “$599 US dollar” meme, and that price point would haunt PlayStation for years to come.
Some other notable moments during the press conference include Sony showing off Ridge Racer on PSP, with then CEO Kaz Hirai enthusiastically shouting, “RIIIDGE RACERR” as the camera awkwardly shook while zooming in on his gameplay.
Of course, no one can forget about the giant enemy grab meme. Genji: Days of the Blade was one of the PS3’s few meager launch titles. When showing off gameplay, the presenter really emphasized that the game was based on real historical events. Then, a giant enemy crab appeared.
Despite the PS3’s rocky start, it did eventually surpass the Xbox 360’s worldwide shipped total in 2013. Sony ended up recapturing players’ hearts with the PS4, and Microsoft has admitted that it had lost the console wars against PlayStation during its recent FTC trial to acquire Activision Blizzard.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
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