Sony’s announcement that they would not be at E3 2019 was a blow to E3 whether the shows wants to admit it or not. Yes, attendance is up, but that has been artificially inflated by increased the number of “Gamer” Passes available. When looking at leaked floor maps, it just feels weird and out of place to not see a booth for Sony next to Nintendo. For a company that has nothing invested at the show this year, Sony sure has been making a lot of announcement and teases. At E3 2018, Sony announced 3 big games that were going to be on the horizon: Death Stranding by Kojima Productions, Ghost of Tsushima by Sucker Punch, and The Last of Us Part 2 by Naughty Dog.
In a recent State of Play, Sony also announced Medievil will be heading to PS4 in October. During that same State of Play, a new trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Remake was dropped. For a game that we have not heard from since E3 2015, there is a ton of things starting to happen around it. First a concert is announced that will be strictly for the Final Fantasy 7 score on June 9th, but also getting a new footage trailer dropped a couple of weeks before E3. Oddly enough Square is taking Sony’s prime time 6pm E3 spot. Sony also recently announced the creation of Playstation Productions which will be overseen by Shawn Leyden. It’s already been said that they are deep in development on a movie treatment of Uncharted, which honestly that has been going on for a few years, and we on the podcast think Sony missed their window. They are also going to be making a TV series out of the series Twisted Metal. For a game that is about destruction and mayhem, I wonder what direction they will take for the show. Then, on top of all of these announcements, there were not one, but two tweets regarding Death Stranding on Memorial Day.
From my perspective, usually where there is smoke, there is fire. Sony is keeping everything focused on them, and I wouldn’t put it past Sony to have a State of Play ready to be dropped the final Thursday of E3 with more details on games that have already been announced. I have a feeling that Hideo Kojima is going to be giving us a release date for Death Stranding. The game looked extremely polished at E3 2018. This is Kojima though, and he never releases a game until it is ready in his eyes. Overall, I am hoping that we do hear something from Sony during E3, even if its just a 10-15 min state of play that gives us more information on the above mentioned games that are sure to be hybrid PS4 and PS5 games.
