Sony, No 2019 E3 Showing

With such a huge userbase?

Because of it. They are going to get the games, and people are primarily going to get them and play them on PS4 no matter what they do. Why fight MS for the "privilege" of having them present at their press conference?

Edit: Actually I read your original post wrong. Actual exclusives as opposed to exclusive reveals? No way they are paying for those. They don't need to. What are people going to un-buy their PS4s if the exclusives aren't there for the next year or two? Or are people who haven't already bought in due to the existing exclusives going to be moved by a few more?
 
Last edited:
Because of it. They are going to get the games, and people are primarily going to get them and play them on PS4 no matter what they do. Why fight MS for the "privilege" of having them present at their press conference?

Edit: Actually I read your original post wrong. Actual exclusives as opposed to exclusive reveals? No way they are paying for those. They don't need to. What are people going to un-buy their PS4s if the exclusives aren't there for the next year or two? Or are people who haven't already bought in due to the existing exclusives going to be moved by a few more?
Yes actual exclusives.
It is not about people unbuying. It is about maintaining presence. Yes there is still an untapped market out there and yes some people who already own a PS4 or don't own any console might buy an XBOX.
It is all about maintaining the strength of your brand and keeping your current customers happy regardless if they will not un-buy your console. PS gamers are having expectations every E3 even though their consoles is successful and had a nice collection of exclusives. They want unique games to keep rolling.
This is actually a perfect opportunity for MS to hit hard and wow.
 
Yes actual exclusives.
It is not about people unbuying. It is about maintaining presence. Yes there is still an untapped market out there and yes some people who already own a PS4 or don't own any console might buy an XBOX.
It is all about maintaining the strength of your brand and keeping your current customers happy regardless if they will not un-buy your console. PS gamers are having expectations every E3 even though their consoles is successful and had a nice collection of exclusives. They want unique games to keep rolling.
This is actually a perfect opportunity for MS to hit hard and wow.

Consumers buying at this point in the console lifecycle aren't very valuable. They are not enthusiasts (or are younger gamers) and likely won't be spending a lot on games. They are better off spending resources on doing everything they can to attract the prime consumers at he beginning of the next cycle than diverting them to grab the scraps at the bottom of the barrel of this one.
 
Or they could be upgrading/buying the pros/X models for higher quality and performance.
 
I can say that watching the press conferences has made me aware of and created interest for games I would not otherwise have been aware of. Surely I am not the only one for which this is the case. ... ... If you take the industry giants out of E3, E3 dies.

If E3 dying is the consequence of removing industry giants that suggests people aren't as interested in the smaller/indie stuff as the AAA/AA titles so perhaps you are in a minority. You know what is super popular without being dominated by industry giants? PAX. :yep2:
 
If E3 dying is the consequence of removing industry giants that suggests people aren't as interested in the smaller/indie stuff as the AAA/AA titles so perhaps you are in a minority. You know what is super popular without being dominated by industry giants? PAX. :yep2:

Why would you need to have it suggested to you that the gaming market as a whole are more interested in the AAA titles than they are smaller/indie titles? It's an objective fact. You know what is not "super popular" once you leave the bubble of the gaming enthusiasts? PAX.

E3 is (was?) important because it can reach beyond the audience of the video gaming enthusiast to the larger group of "people who play video games". It is these gamers that without E3 will be harder to reach for all but the big names.
 
Consumers buying at this point in the console lifecycle aren't very valuable. They are not enthusiasts (or are younger gamers) and likely won't be spending a lot on games. They are better off spending resources on doing everything they can to attract the prime consumers at he beginning of the next cycle than diverting them to grab the scraps at the bottom of the barrel of this one.
But this is short-term thinking. We don't know for a fact that gamers won't spend significantly. But it's not just about getting some extra cash now.
It's about maintaining the strength of your presence at it's maximized potential and your current and potential customer's perception about the brand positive throughout. The customer is not thinking like "oh I understand why Sony did this". They view the companies offerings. Customers are tough and easily draw conclusions. If conclusions are factual or not it doesn't matter. A negative impression spreads 10 times more and it favors competition. Positive impressions are the backbone of your next console's success. You want your customers to be repeating next gen because they were continuously happy. But they are myopic and will remember the last impression they got more than the lasting earlier one
 
Considering racing games don't move units anywhere like they use to in previous generations I doubt thats happening.

Because they usually sucks?

GT has been stagnating for two generations.
Driveclub had big problems at launch but then it was loved by everyone.
Project Cars had problems and it's not the best thing.
The Crew 1-2 are crap, it's nothing but Ubisoft fault.
The last Need for Speed have ben crap and it's because EA refuses to do what customers want.

The only decent AAA racing games released recently are in the Forza Series and FH4 is selling really well despite being limited to a console platform that has around 1/3 of the install base of current gen.
 
Yes I dont think the state of GT is due to the fact that racing games dont shift units anymore. GT was a system seller. And the millions spent on the series do not reflect the final quality.
They could have spent these millions differently and produce something incredibly better and it would have moved units like hot cakes.
GT was selling better than any racing game for a long time. Even the delayed GT5 that came with inconsistencies and problems moved a lot of units including hardware units.
But people gave up on it after it failed to deliver the desired quality. Gran Turismo was the Fifa and Pro Evolution of racing games before and there is no reason it couldnt have maintained that status if the quality was good enough
 
But this is short-term thinking. We don't know for a fact that gamers won't spend significantly. But it's not just about getting some extra cash now.
It's about maintaining the strength of your presence at it's maximized potential and your current and potential customer's perception about the brand positive throughout. The customer is not thinking like "oh I understand why Sony did this". They view the companies offerings. Customers are tough and easily draw conclusions. If conclusions are factual or not it doesn't matter. A negative impression spreads 10 times more and it favors competition. Positive impressions are the backbone of your next console's success. You want your customers to be repeating next gen because they were continuously happy. But they are myopic and will remember the last impression they got more than the lasting earlier one

Is a lack of exclusives and only a lack of exclusives going to make customers unhappy?
 
Why would you need to have it suggested to you that the gaming market as a whole are more interested in the AAA titles than they are smaller/indie titles? It's an objective fact.

I'm not following you. You said you discovered titles through E3 that you otherwise would not have. I assume those are smaller/indie titles? You also said E3 is dead with industry giants. If E3 is important for small/indie title discovery then it will survive without industry giants. If not, then it never was a big place for discovery for those same titles. :nope: There are plenty of other shows as well; PGW, GamesCom, TGS..

E3 is (was?) important because it can reach beyond the audience of the video gaming enthusiast to the larger group of "people who play video games". It is these gamers that without E3 will be harder to reach for all but the big names.

Except E3 occurs during the summer when a lot of people go away. If you're not an enthusiast and all the news comes out in the the five days you are away, you're less likely be up to speed, not more. Also people who are not enthusiasts and aren't reading/watching much about gaming, why would they suddenly want to wade through hundreds and hundreds of articles and videos inside a week? I am an enthusiast and I struggle to keep up along with everything else in my life.
 
You want your customers to be repeating next gen because they were continuously happy. But they are myopic and will remember the last impression they got more than the lasting earlier one
To a degree. It's unrealistic to think that gamers will enjoy Spider-Man, GoW, HZD, etc., but lose heart in PlayStation come next-gen because of nothing being shown at an E3.
 
Except E3 occurs during the summer when a lot of people go away. If you're not an enthusiast and all the news comes out in the the five days you are away, you're less likely be up to speed, not more. Also people who are not enthusiasts and aren't reading/watching much about gaming, why would they suddenly want to wade through hundreds and hundreds of articles and videos inside a week? I am an enthusiast and I struggle to keep up along with everything else in my life.
The larger eyes of the world that don't cover gaming specifically will cover big E3 events, like new hardware. Of course, they don't provide indie reports which their audience isn't interested in, I don't think. So the loss of the industry giants would result in less coverage worldwide, but no less coverage of small and indie titles that'll still be covered in the specialist press.
 
The larger eyes of the world that don't cover gaming specifically will cover big E3 events, like new hardware. Of course, they don't provide indie reports which their audience isn't interested in, I don't think. So the loss of the industry giants would result in less coverage worldwide, but no less coverage of small and indie titles that'll still be covered in the specialist press.

Yup. E3 losing industry giants and changing (or disappearing altogether) wouldn't meaningfully impact smaller/indie titles. The media have been covering gaming more outside of E3. When Sony explained their rationale for PS4 Pro, that was to the Guardian newspaper.

Gaming has been too big an industry for the last two generations for mainstream media to ignore.
 
I'm not following you. You said you discovered titles through E3 that you otherwise would not have. I assume those are smaller/indie titles? You also said E3 is dead with industry giants. If E3 is important for small/indie title discovery then it will survive without industry giants. If not, then it never was a big place for discovery for those same titles. :nope: There are plenty of other shows as well; PGW, GamesCom, TGS..

OK, let's try another analogy. Think movie trailers. The draw is the feature you are going to see, but in the course of viewing the main feature (assuming you don't deliberately avoid the trailers) you are exposed to upcoming features that you may not have known about. That is the effect I'm talking about. The smaller titles can ride the coattails of the attention the larger releases bring when they share a venue. Without the shared venue, this doesn't happen.
 
One of the things I'm thinking here is that 3rd party studios rely on the giants as much as the giants rely on the 3rd party studios.
They need the grand stage and all the attention those grand stages provide to help move units as well. That's why marketing deals are secured.
It comes with a cost of course - the cost of
a) make sure there is a pro/x variant
b) make sure it's 4K
c) give me exclusive content
d) game pass/play anywhere/some frame rate stuff etc

It's never just as cut and dry as, just market my game. Sometimes it is, but most times I don't think so.

Having said that, Sony and MS have the power to determine which of 3P games go on their stage when it fits the narrative they want to sell.
And so, ignoring exclusives, its slightly problematic to let your competitor have all of E3. You've pretty much let them have their pick of the crop for games willing to bend over backwards to be marketed on the big stage.

When Sony and MS were both there, they had 2 to choose from, and they could easily decline and go to the other platform if that suited them better. But now they can't. And developers aren't the ones choosing the platform to market with, publishers are.

So that's 1 point, and I think strategically Sony giving up E3 hurts them there on that one.

The other has to do with who goes to E3, not just who watches it. There are lot of developers who to go E3, a lot of people for the first time seeing each other's work, seeing what the other studios are working on. There's a lot of networking happening there as well. And on that front, once again, MS can control the narrative here. If they want to push game pass, they can get all the studios and publishers talking about game pass. If they want to push DXR, they can have a full stage of DXR titles and push that narrative to other studios as well.

Sony has given MS control to have a large influence over the industry by not having a counter response.

Under Andrew House, I don't think this would have happened. Sorry guys. Since Layton took over in Oct 2017, E3 2018 was a re-hash, PSX 2018 is cancelled, now E3 2019 is cancelled.

Their whole game pipeline has stalled, for whatever reason, but their games pipeline is perhaps their most important selling point here. They are, as far as I can see without being hyperbolic, playing catchup on features and services. And from what I read, the only reason people buy Playstation is because xbox has no games. Except when you're not announcing anything at all for as long as they will not be, that's not really a sign of games either.

No E3 or PSX means no talking about new important OS features. I guess there is nothing in the pipe there as well.

When Satya took over Balmer, and when Phil took over Mattrick. MS has swung around completely. In both direction and how they communicate. Leadership does matter a lot more than people give credit for.

The idea of Nintendo directs is great for things that are already announced, but not a great place to talk about _major_ services, games and feature announcements.

They can do that at PSX, sure. But PSX isn't where the industry collectively gets together and looks and discusses what's happening. The only 3P groups there are the ones that made backend deals with Sony. There's no mindshare for companies not tied into their marketing. And what if your title is releasing before PSX2019? Will call of duty really be announced at.. Blizzcon?

imo this was Sony's first major blunder of this generation. Either they got way too overconfident and some features kept popping up on Xbox side that they didn't think they needed until it was too late, thus the delay to their console. Or X1X is performing much better than they expected and they don't want to launch a unit that close in power to X1X and thus had to delay.
 
Last edited:
The larger eyes of the world that don't cover gaming specifically will cover big E3 events, like new hardware. Of course, they don't provide indie reports which their audience isn't interested in, I don't think. So the loss of the industry giants would result in less coverage worldwide, but no less coverage of small and indie titles that'll still be covered in the specialist press.

And the world between? Those that aren't on IGN/Gamespot/GB every day, but check in around E3 time to see what's new with gaming? Those sites still see spikes of traffic around that time, so this is still a real thing. There are gradations of engagement between those that keep up with gaming on a regular basis and those that only know a new CoD or Battlefield are coming out when they see the commercial. E3 has always been a means to spread awareness beyond the normal reach of the industry through the enthusiast press. It is this increased awareness that benefits all that participate in the event. To continue to serve this role, though, things need to take place at the event that large segments of the overall video gaming population care about. Large enough segments that there is overlap with the viewship/readership of more general media outlets. And large enough that it focuses the attention of the less-engaged gamers, providing an opportunity for additional exposure to smaller releases.
 
Last edited:
Without the shared venue, this doesn't happen.

Sony can continue to show off small/indie titles at events outside of E3. And because that event is not competing with seven other industry giants, each of those indie titles has a much better chance of being remembered.
 
Back
Top