The rumors are true: there is no PlayStation Experience happening in 2018. Last year’s PlayStation Experience was down in Anaheim, CA in December and that was the first place that we were able to play games like WipEout VR and Firewall Zero Hour right after they were announced.
Sony made the announcement today on a recording of the 308th episode of PlayStation Blogcast. During the episode Shawn Layden, chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, made the announcement.
“For 2018, I know this is going to be a disappointment to some people, but we’ve decided not to hold a PlayStation Experience this year. We won’t have it in the States this year,” Layden said.
This is the first time since the event started in 2014. It had been held four years in a row up to this point. Next year, 2019, marks the 25th anniversary of the original PlayStation.
“Now that we have Spider-Man out the door, we’re looking down in 2019 to games like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Days Gone’ but we wouldn’t have enough to bring people altogether in some location in North America to have that event,” Layden said.”We don’t want to set expectations really high and then not deliver on it. It was a hard decision, but we determined that this year we will not hold a PlayStation Experience.”
Basically it sounds like they don’t think they have enough confirmed games for 2019 that they can show off to warrant hosting an event.
Frankly, that doesn’t seem like it can be the real reason. He cites Dreams and Days Gone, but between other titles like The Last of Us II, Ghosts of Tsushima, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Death Stranding, and countless indie titles as well as PSVR titles there should be enough to show off. In fact, they could easily also show games that have just came out and/or are releasing at the end of this year.
I’m not in a position to verifiably say the reason for not having a PlayStation Experience, but the reason must be deeper than they don’t think they’ve got enough games to show since this is both a PSVR and PS4 non-VR event.
What do you think? Is it a budget concern? Let us know down in the comments below!
