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[yurinka]

Even "prefer" is something of an overstatement in this case; it's not that Sony is choosing one over the other, it's that Sony is choosing to go to a worthwhile show and has little interest in another.

Yes, Sony prefered to go to ChinaJoy instead of Gamescom.

The only logical explanation is that they prefered to spend their -limited- in ChinaJoy because it's a bigger event, in the biggest country, where they are highly growing and have a huge room to grow. To grow in key Asian countries like China, Korea or India is one of the current key goals of SIE.

In EU they already dominate the console market and even if they grow they don't there in PS and PC, don't have a lot of room to grow there compared to Asia.

As far as I can remember, Sony has not had a big presence at Gamescom, and especially once they stopped producing trade show demos, they've not had much software to bring.

In recent years in general Sony basically didn't have a big presence anywhere. Remember they did stop attending E3 years before it died. In recent years they funded the indie games area of TGS as sponsor.

This year they're attending ChinaJoy and will have a PS booth in 3 different TGS areas.

And well, they don't need to make demos to have a booth: they can display there trailers of their games and leave the demo stations for 3rd party games or to put there already released time limited demos of 1st party games.

(Since probably the PS3 on, Sony's business strategy has been to place its big titles in Q1 rather than compete with the 3rd party publishers with a Christmas title, so not only have they curtailed the quantity of games put out as SIE games, they don't generally have titles ready for the floor the way Christmas-oriented publishers do.)

Sony released many big titles in Q2, Q3 or Q4. As an example, this year they have Marathon and Yotei in Q4 (Marathon could be delayed beyond that). Or in recenttimes, they released Spider-Man 2 in Q4.

(BTW, the "major presence" mentioned in the headline of this topic is relative. Sony will have a booth, they will have all their old games which are new to China, including some 3rd Party titles they will bring along to fill out the roster, and they will have updates on all the China Hero Project titles. There won't be a keynote; there won't be a flagship AAA game announcement, unless they make a deal with a Chinese developer like MiHoYo or a Tencent company; Sony will just be there doing Chinese-market game business.)

Their lineup there pretty likely will be a selection -as usual- of recently published or upcoming PS games (and now PC ports too) already approved to be released in China by their game regulation agency.

This is Sony's secert for long term console growth. A hard focus on India will be next after China. India will more than likely be their focus in the 2030s.

It isn't a secret, in the first business segment meeting after releasing PS5, Jim Ryan highlighted the main growth vectors for this generation, and one of them was to grow in new regions namedropping China, Korea and India.

Connected to this, their PC, GaaS and off-gaming growth strategies were other key growth vectors. Normal because even more than in Japan and the west PC is bigger than PS and GaaS has the majority of gaming userbase and revenue.

 

[EN250]

Makes sense, other than Ghost of Strong Independent Asian Woman, they don't have much else to show

 

[mckmas8808]

It isn't a secret, in the first business segment meeting after releasing PS5, Jim Ryan highlighted the main growth vectors for this generation, and one of them was to grow in new regions namedropping China, Korea and India.

Connected to this, their PC, GaaS and off-gaming growth strategies were other key growth vectors. Normal because even more than in Japan and the west PC is bigger than PS and GaaS has the majority of gaming userbase and revenue.

It's a secret in the sense that your average video game podcaster doesn't know anything about it. They haven't even covered any of the bolded that you said. Only gaming nerds that listen to Playstation execs like us know this. Hell........over half of GAF has no clue of Sony's plans. Just read this thread for instance.

 

[mckmas8808]

Makes sense, other than Ghost of Strong Independent Asian Woman, they don't have much else to show

 

[yurinka]

It's a secret in the sense that your average video game podcaster doesn't know anything about it. They haven't even covered any of the bolded that you said. Only gaming nerds that listen to Playstation execs like us know this. Hell........over half of GAF has no clue of Sony's plans. Just read this thread for instance.

Well, if they have some minimal interest on following Sony, I assume they realized that in recent year Sony did deals with many Chinese games like Genshin Impact, ZZZ, Lost Soul Aside, Phantom Blade Zero or -getting lucky, not because of signing anything- also got timed exclusivity of Black Myth Wukong. In addition to some Korean one like Stellar Blade.

Plus they also should know Sony does the China Hero Project stuff that adds several Chinese more games to the console, and that they have the push in PC & GaaS (many may know that PC is bigger than PS in China and that China is even more focused in GaaS than the west), and that Sony also signed with several Chinese (or Korean) devs/publishers/platform holders.

Makes sense, other than Ghost of Strong Independent Asian Woman, they don't have much else to show

What a flatearther. Death Stranding 2, Lost Soul Aside, Marathon, Saros, Marvel Tokon, Intergalactic plus the many other first/second party games, like Destiny 2/Helldivers/GT updates and PC ports also exist. Plus obviously the gazillion great 3rd party games they get every year too.