During our coverage of the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, I noticed that the Playstation logo was clearly displayed in association with Star Wars: Battlefront. The t-shirts that were given out at the reveal for the game clearly show this and it is clear that that PS4 will be a large part of the marketing for the upcoming game.
To me this in some ways signals a changing of the guard as usually it is Microsoft and their deep pockets which snap up every marketing event they can be associated with for product launches. One has to look no further than the Call of Duty series to see how Microsoft pays to land their logo all over the ads for the games and to get the new DLC first.
Sony started to make inroads in this field with Destiny and while I know that the affiliation comes down to who cuts the best deal (Biggest check) with a developer it is interesting to see Sony becoming a bigger player in this arena.
With their very large platform base for the PS4, Sony is an attractive partner for a new game as they can tout that sales base as a reason to affiliate a new game with the system over their rival as if money is equal on both sides; it just makes more sense to go with the larger base.
We also expect to see a fundamental change at E3 and PAX Prime as more and more PS4 units are being used to demo new games whereas in the past, The PC and Xbox 360 were the platforms of choice at most shows. Now barring an exclusive, you see the PC and PS4 most often though the PC systems often use the Xbox controllers.
It is too early to tell if this is just an isolated example or a growing sign of a new direction for Sony where they are more aggressive in their product placement and dealings with third party vendors, but it does make things interesting, especially since Microsoft is getting ready to get some serious attention with the pending release of Halo 5.
