PlayStation Boss Explains Why Sony Announced So Few Specific Release Dates At E3

Sony brought plenty of big games to E3 2017, but, unfortunately, it seems they left their release calendar at home. PlayStation 4 owners who actually want to know when they can play the system's latest, greatest games were left wanting, as well over half the big titles shown were left without a specific release date.

Of course, this is partly because games like God of War, Spider-Man, and Shadow of the Colossus aren't coming out until 2018, but even 2017 games like Gran Turismo Sport were left without a specific date. What's going on here? Well, Kinda Funny's Greg Miller tried to get to the bottom of this new release date phobia in an GameSpot interview with Sony's Shuhei Yoshida. Here's what the PlayStation boss had to say…

"Because we announced a lot of release dates for games that we had to apologize for pushing back in the past, we got together and discussed this seriously. Because PS4 games are so big and all the teams, even veteran teams making games for the past 10 years, still miscalculate how much work is done at the end of the development. So, we agreed to not announce release dates until very, very close to the release date. That puts a lot of challenge to our marketing and sales teams, but they understood and agreed and allowed us to just say seasons like fall or spring until we are so close to a finished beta. So, that's the reason we didn't announce [many actual dates.]"

Well, that makes sense. Nintendo has taken a similar approach in recent years, although even they gave specific dates to most of their big 2017 games. Yoshida also discussed the different feel of this year's Sony E3 press conference, which featured a steady stream of trailers, with very little talking or hype in between…

"If you noticed, we had to put many of our games coming this year on the pre-show, because we wanted to make the actual show one hour. There were no technical issues that we needed to be worried about and there was no switching people, so we didn't have rehearsal. We had just one run-through the night before. That was it."

I'll admit, I enjoyed the smoother-flowing, less-chatty press conference, although I would have liked more release dates. Most reasonable gamers realize delays happen – I'd rather suffer the occasional sting of disappointment rather than be kept in the dark.

You can check out WWG's latest Playstation 4 coverage here.

[via GameSpot]