but TLOU Online has not had any kind of trailer or video announcement. We don't even know the official name of the game, let alone a release date.
Neil Druckmann himself appeared in an E3 event calling it TLOU Online, saying it's going to be their biggest game ever, that is set in a new city with new characters, shown some artwork and mentioned they'll share more about it early next year.
Same with Sony London and Bend. They're working on something, great, they haven't told us what it is.
Yes, they told us what it is. Bend is working on an open world action adventure that even if it's a new IP builds on top of the mechanic and core pillars they built for Days Gone.
London Studio is working on a non VR PS5 AAA exclusive new IP set in a modern fantasy London that will be an online coop combat game and will be their most ambitious game ever.
The rest of the games you mentioned are second party games, and do not qualify as my post
2nd party games are 1st party games.
Sony has been very vocal about how "They can't make a game that competes against Call of Duty."
Yes, and it's a fact that there isn't any other yearly IP that consistently sells 20M-30M copies for each game plus on top has a mobile game that generates $1B/year and the F2P Warzone games. The closest one is FIFA, but is far from it. No other publisher -including Sony- is able to create an IP that generates around $3B per year as CoD does.
Sony complained to Brazilian regulators to try and stop the Activision deal.
Obviously, the acquisition goes againts their interests because it may mean that Sony would likely end losing CoD and the other ABK IPs somewhere in the future.
- Jim Ryan flew to Brussels to speak with European regulators to try and stop the Activision deal.
It's what a CEO of a key market player has to do if the EU regulators want to interview him to ask stuff about a $70B acquisition that is going to happen on their market. You don't go to visit the EU regulators just because you want.
- Sony has released a "PlayStation Showcase" every September for the last several years.
No, they only did it 2 years. This doesn't mean that it's a rule that they must follow.
- Many industry insiders spoke confidently about knowing of a September showcase.
- Several games that were rumored to be in this showcase were making cryptic posts to drum up announcement hype before the PlayStation Showcase (example: Helldivers 2).
Here's the speculation:
- Jim Ryan cancelled the September PlayStation Showcase at the last minute so as not to contradict his claims to regulators that Sony's business would be irreparably harmed by the Activision deal.
- It's very plausible, some (myself included) would say it's painfully obvious. The games are still being made, but we won't hear about them until the Activision deal is mostly finalized and the heat from it has dissipated.
You should learn that what these 'insiders' say is bullshit when these 'insiders' keep saying for like over a year every month or so that 'next month Sony will have a showcase/big State of Play/announce blablabla' and then nothing happens. You should stop believing them.
Sony didn't have enough consoles in the stores, so didn't make sense to rise the hype now when they already have demand on gaming history record levels if there are not consoles in the stores. It's smarter to save the hype bullets of 1st party games that will be released in the long term for later.
They focused their marketing in the many 1st party top tier stuff they released this year like Horizon 2, GT7, GoWR, TLOUP1, MLB and PC ports of GoW 2018, Spider-Man, Morales, Sackboy and Uncharted. Plus PSVR2 that will be released soon, the PS Plus rework, 3rd party exclusives like the 2nd part of Final Fantasy VII Remake and other Square Enix or Capcom stuff and cool 2nd party stuff. Plus also announcing acquisitions like Bungie, Haven or that mobile game studio take makes them over a billion per year and also marketing some cool indies or multiplatform AAA titles that had some deal with them and released this year or early next one.
They shown, announced or marketed a shit ton of stuff this year that has been really packed for them. And simply didn't make sense to rise more the hype, made more sense for them to keep other announcements for later.
I don't think they'll announce anything at the Game Awards, maybe 'only' a Death Stranding 2 teaser since Kojima is friend of the Doritos Pope. Btw, regarding acquisitions SIE saved a good chunk of money (like twice of the one spent on Bungie and Haven) to close acquisitions from October to March. And if they may expect to close them before April they may announce them basically now. So probably they'll announce a big acquisition at the Doritos Awards.
Now that they released all their 2022 stuff and don't need to market it anymore they'll move their focus to the next stuff, which very likely will be a State of Play in December or January to highlight some early 2023 releases including the PSVR2 launch window stuff and 3rd party games with some kind of exclusive (Street Fighter 6, Resident Evil Village VR, RE 4 remake, Forspoken...) plus some upcoming exclusive indie.
In fact they could make a 'Q1/H1 2023 AAA games State of Play' for January, a 'Launch windown PSVR2 stuff State of Play' for February and an 'indies focused State of Play' in March or April.
And then at the E3 they could have a Showcase where they could announce and show new 1st and 2nd party big things: new Spider-Man 2 trailer and release date, Bungie new IP announcement, Firewalk new IP announcement, TLOU Online showcase, Death Stranding 2 announcement if not announced at the Doritos Awards, Team Asobi's next game, Helldivers 2 if real, London Studio's new IP, NC Soft's Horizon MMORPG if true, Bluepoint's next game, the next Onimusha, FFXVI launch trailer, PS Plus cloud gaming release for mobile devices or maybe also some acquisition.
was when they announced Wolverine.
