Sony PlayStation will be broadcasting its August 14 Gamescom press conference and live Q&A from Cologne to the world via a web stream starting 7pm local time (1pm New York, 6pm London, 1am the next day in Malaysia, Singapore, and Perth); it's a far cry from the event's early days, when
attendees would attempt to stream low quality footage from struggling smartphones.
The console manufacturer's website is already boasting a bold, and some might say controversial, theme of "games as art," teasing contributions fro Shuhei Yoshida (SCE Worldwide Studios president), Kellee Santiago (co-founder of the Journey and Flower studio), Alex Evans (co-founder of the LittleBigPlanet studio)
and Ian Dallas (co-founder of The Unfinished Swan studo).
Some of SCE Worldwide's subsiduary studios include SCE Santa Monica (God of War: Ascension and co-development on The Last Guardian), Tokyo's Project Siren (Gravity Rush), and Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us). Kellee left Thatgamecompany in March and has not yet announced her next project but is a partner in the Indie Fund game financing group.
LittleBigKarting for PS3 and LittleBigPlanet Vita are expected the weeks of September 19 and November 6 respectively; The Unfinished Swan hasn't yet been dated for release on PS3 but was presented as a show floor demo at E3 in June.
Don't worry about catching fellow manufacturers Microsoft or Nintendo at the event -- Nintendo hasn't given a press conference at the Cologne event since it launched in 2009 and won't be there at all this year. Microsoft, perhaps testing the waters with 2011's atypical Play Day event, is striking out on its own, prioritizing instead "smaller, more localized promotions and experiences."