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[Karim]

+1
Stellar Blade 2: On The Bitch

Fixed.

 

[Woopah]

I imagine more announcement will be made at a State of Play in September, so don't think there's much to worry about.

 

[CamHostage]

The game of acting like they don't have the global infrastructure or resources to cater to multiple regional fanbases & communities simultaneously.

They ceased going to E3 (which by itself ceased existing), and they stopped going to Gamescom. Are there others it should be at but isn't? (It's CES and GDC presence has always been sporadic.)

They did come out for EVO (including the Marvel Tokkon debut.) No PAX in a while but you never know how those go.

I'll never buy the cap that SIE have basically ceased all American public gaming events because they only had enough to choose between that or ChinaJoy, for example.

I don't think you should buy it. Its unlikely that they're choosing one over another; rather, they're evaluating each event for their purpose. The reasoning for supporting or not supporting each show is different.

• E3 is/was an old-school show for the press and investors, which is pretty much outmoded in modern marketing when video showcases and more regular business reports can easily be done online.
• Gamescom is a lower-tier event (even though it's biggest by attendance) which has a lot of problems in being useful for marketing purposes, such as the late season timing and public floor and generally outdated regional marketing functions.
• ChinaJoy has specific tactical purpose for Sony to be there. They need to support and offer their China Hero Project program, and they need to continue to try to convince a massive audience that consoles are a good way to play games.
• TGS is old-timey in style and purpose, and I don't really know why they still bother when they've dropped other events (looking at the roster year after year, I would say they barely do bother, although Yotei and Marvel are big on the roster.) However, Japanese culture is very persnickety, and the PS2 brand has lost favor there, so there might be some just culture aspect at play. Plus, the floor is different from other events, with tourneys and lines , and mostly without DF-style reporters queuing up just to critique the early performance of the demo. And it's later in the season (a month more than Gamescom, but Jpn product calendars are managed differently to lead into its winter buying season,) and the products demoed there are generally the end-of-year releases rather than in-progeess demos coming in hot, so it probably still makes sense.
• ....All of these events often get State of Play if not Showcase showings, so the content is still getting shown to the public, just not the old-school dog and pony show way.

I am still a little surprised that Sony doesn't just put a bare minimum floor space out at Gamescom. It feels like it's too loud an event to not have branded kiosks out of on-shelf product. (Also, the bad press of "Sony flaked on Gamescom again!" seems like an unforced error to avoid.) But as far as going back to the old way of cramming announcements to fit an event schedule or severing the development schedule to work up a trade show demo, that old method is done for.