In 2005 and 2006, Sony’s conference at the E3 convention in Los Angeles was dedicated to unveiling the PS3 in its final form. During these press conferences, we were shown all kinds of new technologies, from experimenting with the EyeToy’s response, to everyday objects (where Phil Harrison, since departed, scooped water out of a virtual bathtub by physically waving cups around in front of the camera) to the kinds of graphical tricks that the PS3’s GSX chip could throw up. Throw up, in the nicest way possible, of course.

Among those games making their debut over the two years were a PS3 version of London crime game The Getaway, which looked a treat simply because of its photorealistic depiction of the capital, and the shooting game Eight Days. Both have since been scrapped, with more info on this after the jump.

Forum member Officer Mudkip wrote about a blog half a month ago about Eight Days, which you can find here. Introduced in a line-up of games footage at the 2006 conference, it looked like a pretty good game, with car chases, shootouts and plenty of explosions in a dry-looking desert environment. There was a fair bit of skepticism about the footage, (with MotorStorm-esque rumours about the scenes being pre-rendered) but I still thought it looked an enjoyable romp.

The Getaway, merely a codename at the time with no official title confirmed, also looked pretty spectacular, admittedly after viewing only a minute or so of game footage that was shown to the press at the 2005 conference. With no actual gameplay elements shown, the video merely depicted Piccadilly Circus (the square with a fountain in the middle and large Times Square-like board of advertisements on one building; recently spotted in GT5 Prologue) on an average sunny day, with buses, taxis and saloons zipping around the various Londoners casually making their way through the square. Again, there was skepticism over the footage (to me, some of the animation looked a little bit too fluid) and in the end the video was revealed to be completely unrelated to the game itself; odd considering that screenshots were labeled with the watermark “Getaway PS3 Screen Test.”

Both games were being developed by London Studio, Sony’s peripheral experts (having worked on the EyeToy camera and the technology and accessories used in SingStar) and developers of the first two games in the Getaway series. In a statement by Sony, the cancellation of both games was pinned on the ole, “redistribution of resources and budget” mantra, which effectively (in my eyes) meant that Sony felt the projects were going nowhere; perhaps the graphics did not have the ‘wow’ factor found in the potentially pre-rendered footage?

Sony seems to be adamant that the ‘wow’ factor wasn’t there; the statement reads: “It was deemed that with the incredibly strong list of exclusive first party titles coming up…resources should be reallocated to enhance those projects closer to completion.” Essentially, there had been little work done on these games since their E3 presentations, and there wouldn’t be much done in the future. It makes sense, with games such as Little Big Planet and other PS3 exclusives making themselves known outside of the conferences and striding towards completion at a rapid rate.

However, with these two titles and others being canceled (including the European release of Afrika, which is probably no great loss) it’s a bit worrying; Sony promised a lot of games at the conferences before PS3’s release and one-by-one they’re being picked off. It’s no great shakes now, since there are a lot of other quality games out there, but it would have been nice to see Sony stick to their guns and deliver everything they promised at the start. Then again, that’s Sony for you.

Sources: Sony scraps Eight Days and The Getaway - Eurogamer
Sony skipping Afrika for Europe - Kotaku

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