Last week the speculation that Sony would not be attending E3 and would instead use “hundreds of consumer events across the globe” to promote the upcoming Playstation 5 system.
Naturally this sent off waves of speculation and discussions across the gaming world with many opinions centering on if skipping E3 was a mistake for the company especially since Microsoft has already confirmed their participation.
With that in mind; I thought it would be interesting to look at what some of the events Sony may have in mind will be and how they may approach their launch plans.
Livestreams
This is a likely part of things as Sony has used their State of Play to announce upcoming games for a while and have found that they did not even have to hold their PSX the last couple of years.
A Livestream reveal event is expected for the PS5 similar to what they did for the PS4 and we have already had a small taste of this when they dropped the logo and news during their CES 2020 conference.
Consumer Events
This title is a broad but they key to this is their plans to hundreds of events. My thought here is that that may have a combination of Mall Tours, Pop Ups, and mobile events to promote the system. I have been to events where special trucks would go from city to city and stop long enough for fans to come to a central location to look at and play the upcoming offerings.
Nintendo use to bring a trailer to cities for the Wii U launch where they would have us come to a hotel parking lot and sit in the trailer to see items, take pictures, ask questions, and play the games. They did this for a few years until it was obvious that the Wii U was not going to have the sales impact that the company wanted.
Back in the days of Sierra On Line I remember then coming to the Tacoma Mall showing off a series of upcoming games such as Space Quest 3 and others to consumers. Nintendo also did this a few years back when they had display in the Chandler Mall.
While this is an Old-School approach in the days of the Internet; it does allow people who do not attend conventions to see the games up close and you can bet S.W.A.G. and other branded merchandise will be an option as I am sure Sony would love to see PS5 shirts worn around schools in the months prior to launch.
Other conventions
This is a very likely event as despite not appearing at E3 and various shows in 2019; Sony was still on hand at PAX West and had elaborate displays which included hands on time with their pending Predator and Iron Man games.
PAX is a more consumer driven show and it can be discerned that this is where the company focus is but I can say that my staff and I were given very courteous treatment from their booth workers whenever we came by. I would think that a handful of late year shows will be a possibility including the Tokyo Game Show.
While the events are still to be revealed; it will be really interesting to see what Sony has in mind as well as the timing of their reveals. They may wait until Microsoft does their big reveal at E3 and then do an Online response shortly afterwards but I can also see them doing something ahead of the show to generate buzz and to try to set the pace ahead of the show.
Regardless of which steps are taken; it is going to be a very interesting year for gamers.
