For nearly all of last year, up until December, Sony fans were hyping themselves up on rumors that Sony would have a PlayStation Showcase event. As we pointed out, when video games press and content creator Jeff Grubb told fans not to get their hopes up, that fans shouldn’t create fake expectations for announcements and events based on rumors.
Today, Jeff is once again gaming’s Oracle of Delphi, telling gamers what they don’t want to hear. But one may wonder, what is even the big deal about this? So we’ll explain.
Sony launched their State of Play events in 2019 as a new way to engage with their fans about their upcoming games and products. As the Wikipedia page on the State of Play notes, these digital presentations clearly take after the Nintendo Directs.
They were also seen as a way for Sony to separate their marketing and promotion from E3, Gamescom and other similar live game events and expos. Coincidentally, they proved useful to keep gamers engaged through the lockdown and quarantine years of the pandemic, which started shortly after these events started.
PlayStation Showcase events are a much bigger event, and it’s known for being the big show where Sony reveals all their major first party titles. In this way, it’s very similar to the Xbox Games Showcase. Microsoft has changed the branding for a few years, but after their last E3 conference in 2019, they started making all digital video game presentation events of their own from 2020 onwards. There is one big difference between the Xbox Games Showcase and PlayStation Showcase, however.
While we now have five consecutive annual Xbox Games Showcase events, there have only been three PlayStation Showcase events. Sony also had their first PlayStation Showcase in 2019, meaning Sony has only had these events in three of the six years since they started.
Some will argue that Sony can just announce their first party games in their State of Play events, which they did do for Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. It’s clear that Sony only holds these events when they have enough games to show, and that’s why fans look forward to them so much.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Jeff Grubb revealed that Sony hasn’t decided if they want to hold a PlayStation Showcase this year or not. Grubb explained his rumor like this:
“They could still have some fun announcements and they could still start bolstering expectations for 2026. Internally it sounds like they’re debating, and flopping between, maybe making something this summer a full showcase versus another State of Play. But they are considering a showcase.
And if they have a showcase, that means they’ll have a lot of stuff to talk about. And at that point, you would definitely expect to see Wolverine and a lot of other games that could come out next year.”
Now, one would wonder, if they do have enough games to show for a PlayStation Showcase, why aren’t they decided if they will hold one? It’s possible that they aren’t sure if the games that they do have in the works will really be able to excite everyone.
For example, we have been waiting on Sony to reveal the Horizon live service game, the Horizon MMO, and Bungie’s spinoff title Gummi Bears. We also wait for more news on games that have been announced and partly revealed, including Fairgame$, Marathon, and Marvel’s Wolverine. It’s possible that these games are still not ready to be shown, because they are deep in development. It’s also possible that development on some of these titles is not going well.
It’s possible that Sony is weighing on sharing more about the games that are clearly close to release soon, such as Ghost of Yōtei and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, to pad out that PlayStation Showcase. We do think Sony is paying attention to the social noise, and they know that many of their own fans were not satisfied with the recent State of Play. So they may worry that they don’t have enough to show in a PlayStation Showcase to make these fans satisfied, and that certain suggests a lot about what they have to show.
It’s certainly a tight spot for Sony to be in, and an ironic one given their recent financials. But Sony is definitely more worried about those finances than their fans are, and they’ll be making this big decision very carefully.
