Industry insiders say Sony held back on their current PlayStation Showcase. The event, which revealed Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s gameplay, was slammed for lacking first-party exclusives and other things. Their assertions surfaced online.
Sony’s May 24 PlayStation Showcase was anticipated by fans after nearly two years since the last one. The event was nearly an hour long, however it didn’t include release dates or gameplay sequences. Fans were also amazed by how many PlayStation Showcase titles were coming to Xbox.
Tom Henderson, an industry source, later suggested that Sony had been holding back on the PlayStation Showcase online. Henderson said on May 25 that several event titles “are pretty much ready,” even if gameplay reveals and release dates have yet to be revealed.
They were astonished Sony left some AAA titles off of its PlayStation Showcase list.
The Snitch added that another PlayStation PC port will appear in July, calling it “super weird” since it wasn’t at the May 24 event. A prominent publisher may delay announcing near-finished items. Recently, claims surfaced that Nintendo has been holding Metroid Prime Remastered and Fire Emblem Engage for years. Sony traditionally favored lengthier marketing cycles, thus this tactic is unusual.
The recent PlayStation Showcase’s absence of fresh release dates casts doubt on reports that several of the titles shown are close to hitting gold. Naughty Dog promised more information about The Last of Us multiplayer spinoff in 2023, but that game wasn’t shown during the May 24 broadcast. Another PlayStation Showcase or State of Play stream could still happen in the second half of 2023.
In the run-up to the Christmas season, the video game industry’s most profitable time of year, publishers focus on pushing their existing stocks, so the window for it to happen is tight. Sony must find space for upcoming AAA PlayStation exclusives like Death Stranding 2 and The Last of Us multiplayer.