3 cool things Sony showed at CES 2024
CES 2024 featured some interesting keynotes, from Kia's modular car revolution to Samsung's AI-home renovation schemes. Sony's showcase also boasted several wow moments that stole the stage at this year's conference.
There was a lot that Sony covered from its ventures in filmmaking, its cameras, and even some cool floor-based haptic feedback for its theme park. However, if you don't feel like watching the full-hour-long press conference we broke down the coolest moments from Sony's presentation.
Afeela as a giant RC car
The belle of the ball for Sony's CES 2024 keynote was Afeela, an electric vehicle that the company is partnering with Honda to make. Afeela is Sony's attempt at entering the EV market with a car that heavily integrates the company's various entertainment vectors—offering Sony movies, shows, and games into Afeela's entertainment console. There's also a massive amount of cameras and sensors—45 in total—in the car, as well as a display built into the front bumper to relay information to cars and pedestrians.
And if it isn't strange enough that the company that makes your PlayStation is entering the vehicle manufacturing game, then you'd love to see the car be controlled with an actual DualSense controller. Yes, in case you haven't seen it already, Izumi Kawanishi, president of the joint venture Sony Honda Mobility, drove the car with a PS5 controller during the press conference.
No, you won't be able to drive this car with a PS5 controller. But it does seem that Sony has grand ideas for the use cases for the DualSense controller. However, for now, Sony says customers can preorder Afeela in 2025 and expects it to ship in 2026.
Legend of Zelda movie
This was a real blink-or-you-miss-it moment but during the various announcements of Sony's plans to adapt its first-party gaming franchises, the company updated the world on the Legend of Zelda movie. The big reveal from President of Sony Pictures Television Studio Katherine Pope was that the studio will be partnering with Nintendo to bring the Hyrule warrior and his princess to the silver screen.
It's a kind of weird endeavor, given the history between Sony and Nintendo, and nothing of much detail was revealed other than the movie is still happening.
Sony also updated viewers that the planned Prime Video's God of War and Netflix's Horizon Zero Dawn shows are beginning pre-production. We also got a quick glimpse of some pre-production footage of the Gravity Rush film adaption as well.
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A new mixed-reality headset
One of the recurring themes at CES is virtual reality. Everyone wants to have a virtual reality machine and so does Sony. While the company already has the excellent PSVR2, Sony announced that it has a mixed-reality headset on the way to compete with the Apple Vision Pro.
You won't have to wait long for this. Developed in partnership with Siemens, the plan is to have these headsets out in 2024 to target content creators and professionals. It'll be powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip and will feature micro-OLED displays for that stunning 4K resolution for the eyes to feast on.
There is, bafflingly enough, no name for this headset as Sony has only referred to it as the "spatial content creation system." As Sony stated during the conference, the goal of this headset is to assist in "sophisticated 3D content creation."