The Annual E3 Sony press conference thread, 2017 edition

Opportunity to do what? Conference ratings don't translate into sales or momentum. In the end it all about price, content and your friends.

 

In the end the harsh reality is that they all spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to show trailers, ultimately. Which they all could have done for free by just releasing them online. Which is where 99.999% of us are going to see them anyway.

So the whole point of doing conferences, and of course fighting over who won a conference, is really becoming less relevant by the year. Pointless.

Yes, you get press coverage. But they'd get press coverage anyway.

And I'm not just saying that because I've had to spend 12 hours today at the most useless and boring conference ever.

 

Yep. They should do it properly. Make a show of it and get people talking. At the moment the press etc. are only turning up because they feel obliged to, but I'd rather save money on the ticket myself. The companies should be rewarding the visitors with an experience worthy of their time and attendance, and making video streamers jealous they can't be there, and getting Twitter swamped with conference tags.

 

Like the time they got accused of sacrificing a goat to promote God of War, maybe they did, I do not remember

 

I found this interesting - apparently Sony deliberately held back additional footage of exclusives from E3 2017, I'm not sure I follow the logic with that. I still think the conference was a bit too short, an additional 10 to 15 minutes would have helped immensely.

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/06/sony_we_held_ps4_exclusives_back_from_e3_2017

 

Because they have other conference before end of the year like TGS and PSX.

 

I get that and presumably that's the reason for holding content back, I just agree with it. E3 is the most important show of the year and I think the show could have benefited with additional exclusive reveals to further highlight the core identity of the PlayStation brand.

Sony should be hitting their stride at this stage in the cycle with third party and exclusive content and while this year has been decent Sony has gotten a bit distracted from what attracted consumers in previous generations.

With MS creating an incredible ecosystem of service quality and backwards compatibility, Sony needs to reassure core audience they will always be home to a wide variety of exclusive content in addition to the best multi platform hits.

 

Quoted from the MS E3 show thread to avoid derailing it to much with Sony discussion.

When Sony launched/revealed PS4P last year, MS countered with the reveal of Scorpio, wonder what Sony will try to counter XBX when it launches in November.
Price drop is probably the "easiest", but maybe not very useful. IMO the people buying a console day 1, have already made up their mind and price has already been accepted.

Maybe they will try with a barrage of game reveals and showing that PS is the platform to be on if you want to play multiplats and exclusives? Then again it looks like they are pushing into the casual segment now with the release of the Playlink titles. Could it be that they focus less on the "hardcore" segment this far into the generation and the masterplan is to widen the customer base?

 

They will increase marketing of the PS4 Pro, all the Sony game presentation during E3 2017 conference were on PS4 Pro except God of War...

 

Sony won the console generation by their e3 2013 delivery. They need to remember that is the event the mainsteam media and casual gamers spoend the most time paying attention to. Casual gamers evaluating which console to buy may not pay attention to the TGS nor PSX announcements. Dividing things between 3 separate events can be a bad move, imo.

 

I doubt casual gamers pay attention to E3 either. They pay attention to whatever their favourite gaming/news website or blogger or YouTuber is saying, who cover all the shows.

 

I was thinking even more casual, parents buying for their younger kids, people getting it as another entertainment device, but not core enough to splunk down on more than 1-2 games per year etc. I remember we kept buying PS2s at the local gas-stations when we went home after having been on the drink on friday/saturday nights. They had Buzz bundles that we for some reason thought was hilarious to play at 4 am in the morning, could have been the girls that insisted on it....

 

I doubt they've even heard of E3!

 

I agree on that, but what I was trying to get across.

1. Core gamers that care about their systems etc, how to keep them on PS and not defect to XBX aka "the best" console. Personally I like the exclusives that PS has historically provided more than the MS ones.

2. None core gamers, lets call the super casuals, how do you get them to buy in. A PS4P or a XBX is probably to outside their budget in regards to a video game console, but why PS4 instead of an XBS.

Assuming that the consoles either are break even or do make some profit, who do you want to buy your console? I would assume the core, since they have a higher attachment rate, but how many casual gamers is a core gamer worth?

This might be video games industry marketing 101, but I still find it interesting to ponder/discuss

 

Brand power(Out of US, Canada and UK Playstation brand is far stronger than Xbox brand... little advantage for Xbox brand in US and equality in UK), price(Xbox One X is 499 euros/dollars against 399 PS4 Pro), community (play with friends it is the network effect), factor and more effective on core gamer exclusive games and the long tail(diversity of games). and the power of console... Some exclusive game are huge like Gran Turismo in Europe maybe the only title with appeals for semi casual player. Uncharted is huge in Europe too. TLOU and God of War are pretty big in US....

In mainstream press E3 is not a big event... TV ads or internet ads are probably more efficient...

 

In the mainstream press, CES and other trade shows aren't a big deal either.

All the gaming sites cover E3 and produces tons of articles and videos. YouTube gets a ton of e3 influenced content. Furthermore, E3 generates a lot of noise in social media.

E3 ends up seeding the internet with a lot of content which disseminates all over and can influence a ton of people even if they aren't directly aware of E3 itself.

 

What reveals ? They hav big games coming out for the next 4 years or so announced. I would expect sony to start winding down first party titles if they are launching a ps5 in 2019/20 but who knows at this point.

 

That's the question, do they have something up their sleeves to try and counteract the xbx or are they just doing their own thing.

Would games like dreams etc sway a potential buyer from xbx to ps4p for instance? Do they have something else or just going with Checkerboard will make us competitive. Or maybe the they feel the segment xbx targets is not worth fighting hard for at this time

 

what else would they have ? There wont be a 2018 ps4 upgrade or even a 2019 I think. Its way to close to the 2016 ps4 pro. Sony could try and get fans onto a every other year upgrade patch but I think they will loose the market if they try to force an every 2-3 year upgrade. Maybe 3 years.... Looks like MS is going to try for a 4 year cycle. So 2013-17 then 17-21 . That can be a good run there. I think sony will jump in 2020 with a new one.

Sony can announce more future games and I am sure they will have some but they already have a lot of games announced for the ps4/pro in its life time. They could do what they did with the ps4 and have nothing but remasters of titles for its first year or two of life and some smaller named games . I am hoping both companies get better at spreading out projects. I liked that MS had a lot in the first year or two even if they were all the highest rated games.

 

Who knows? Shu does, that's why he said it.