Do Sony And PlayStation 'Cheat' To Win The E3 Hype Contest?

As we approach E3, there’s one narrative I’m seeing come up a lot as we discuss what to expect from the show and its major participants.

Sony and PlayStation have done very well the last couple of years at E3, crafting keynote presentations that end up generating loads of hype among fans and lots of claims that they’ve “won” the show with what they’ve shown off.

But they’re accused of “cheating” to make this happen, featuring games that they know full well won’t be out for years and years. It’s a common refrain among Microsoft fans especially that while Sony may grab all the headlines, that the things they announce aren’t out for ages, if ever.
There is evidence of this that's easy enough to point to. Sony’s huge 2015 that had The Last Guardian, the Final Fantasy VII remake and Shenmue 3 making fans’ heads explode, has only seen one out of the three released to date. Last year, Sony showed off a new God of War and The Last of Us 2 to great acclaim, but we don’t even have release dates on those titles yet, as exciting as they may be.

I think you can make an argument that it's standard practice to try to win a hype contest by creating hype by whatever means necessary, and there really isn't such a thing as "cheating." Literally all of E3 is a big marketing song and dance, and Sony has proven, quite simply, that they know how to put on a show. Sure, they may be showing games that are far off, but if the goal is hype-generation, and every year they’re consistently good at generating hype, that’s mission accomplished. At this point, fans know not to expect the games featured to be out by fall, or even by the next E3. Though obviously it does get rather frustrating when years and years go by with them still nowhere in sight.
But past whether this is “cheating” or not, it’s not even clear this long-running narrative is even true. That Sony is the only company that does this.

 

There’s a pretty elaborate research thread on NeoGAF right now discussing this issue. Someone went through and watched E3 presentations from the last few years, wrote down all the games that were featured in the Sony and Microsoft shows, and calculated how long it took for those featured games to be released.

The results were surprising.

The conclusion was that Microsoft does this just as much as Sony, if not more so. The average length of time between showcase and release for Sony was 13.1 months. For Microsoft it was 14.5 months. Using other games and tweaking the calculations a bit, another metric showed Microsoft with an 11.6 month average and Sony with an 11.9 month average, at worst. When the comparison is made using only first party games, excluding indies, Microsoft does have an advantage releasing 72% of games with 12% in production, while Sony has 63% released with 36% in production. But Microsoft also has 16% of their exclusives flat out cancelled, while Sony has zero.

So in short, it’s pretty even. There is not actually this enormous disparity games where Sony games never come out and Microsoft’s pop out like clockwork. Nintendo isn’t included here, but thinking about how many years it was from the announcement of Breath of the Wild to when it was actually released, I have to imagine that it would show similar statistics.

So what’s happening here? This just seems like one of those narratives that is taken as fact based on a few high profile examples. Sony has a reputation of showing off really enormous, much-anticipated games, FFVII Remake, God of War, The Last of Us 2, and the longer they are absent, the more conspicuous it is. But Microsoft does this too. Crackdown 3 was announced in 2014, and has barely been seen since (it should have a presence this year, at last). Other games that were announced during that show, the Phantom Dust Remake, Scalebound, were killed outright and will never see the light of day

Honestly, I think this is the issue. Sony tends to do this with higher profile games more often, but in terms of the actual numbers of announced games to releases, it’s actually pretty close. That leads to the perception that Sony is pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes with these long delays, but in reality, it’s pretty standard, and nothing all that out of the ordinary is actually happening here.
Sony is good at E3. They masterfully served Microsoft in 2013 when PS4 squared off against Xbox One for the first time. They “won” 2015 with their trio of big game announcements, and 2016 brought us two enormously anticipated sequels from two of their biggest franchises (though arguably Nintendo stole that show with Breath of the Wild).

Microsoft has an opportunity to do well this year. They will be the only company debuting new hardware (probably) with the Scorpio, and if what we’ve seen so far is any indication, it should be a sight to behold. I’m very much looking forward to their show as a result.
But in terms of the games they announce? Many probably won’t be out for years, just like Sony, just like Nintendo. This is just how this works. You craft your E3 to produce maximum hype, and worry about exact schedules later. This may be annoying, but it’s not exclusive to Sony, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.