Although Sony has been acting very oddly over the last two years – seeming to resent any communication with fans and announcing increasingly few new games – their transition into industry recluse began even before Covid.
They did not attend E3 2019 and their support for it was already starting to dry up before that. They were at Gamescom 2019 though, which while often described as the European equivalent of E3 is primarily a consumer show, rather than an industry one.
Nevertheless, while most big publishers have since returned to the event in Cologne, Germany, that’s not been the case for Sony and they’ve now confirmed that they won’t be at the 2024 event either.
At this point, that’s not an especially surprising announcement but after a very disappointing summer showcase (at roughly the time their E3 event would’ve been) it means yet another chance to speak to fans directly, and announce new games, has been ignored.
Nintendo will also not be at Gamescom, which is strange because although it was originally thought they didn’t have much to talk about, their summer showcase was filled with new announcements which they could’ve promoted.
However, it’s possible that Nintendo may bear a grudge against Gamescom as last year several stories emerged about them demonstrating the upcoming Switch 2 console to developers there, which Nintendo went to the unusual length of denying (even though it seemed very likely they were true).
Nintendo is in an unusual position at the moment, with their new console likely to be released in the first half of next year and potentially announced this year, but they do usually attend Gamescom.
It’s far harder to understand why Sony is staying away, as Gamescom is now by far the largest video game event in the world, let alone Europe.
One theory is that they simply don’t want to spend the money needed to run a large stand at the event – which is one of the reasons many publishers became disenchanted with E3 – but combined with a long stream of disappointing State of Play showcases it’s made them seem uncommunicative and distant.
Although many were upset at the brevity of the summer State of Play it did at least reveal two new first party titles, with live service title Concord due out on August 23, exactly the same time as Gamescom is taking place.
Considering the poor initial response to Concord’s reveal trailer you might have thought Gamescom would be the perfect place to demonstrate it in public and create some positive word of mouth – but that’s not now going to happen.
A new Astro Bot game was also revealed during the State of Play, which most fans are much more enthusiastic about, but once it’s out on September 6 Sony has no more first party titles scheduled with a specific release date. Although Lego Horizon Adventures and the Until Dawn remake are also supposed to be out sometime this year.
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