While Microsoft had a strong showing at E3 and announced Project Scorpio on top of everything else, many continue to wonder why Sony confirmed the PS4 Neo’s existence but didn’t show it. Jim Ryan, Sony Europe’s boss of PlayStation, weighed in on the same with GameReactor and noted that the company didn’t want to dilute its presser with hardware announcements.
“Two reasons, first of all, like I said, we need to keep these things to a manageable time. We had all these games and we really wanted to focus on the games coming in 2016 and 2017 and beyond on PS4 and PlayStation VR. We didn’t want to dilute it or distract it by hardware related announcements.
“But more importantly we feel it’s important that when you make this sort of announcement that you don’t just trod off a list of specifications and this and that, but that you actually demonstrate what a device like Neo is capable of. And when we have the gaming applications to do that, the we’ll be ready and then we’ll show it.”
Ryan also took note of Project Scorpio being VR capable and comments by Microsoft that it would do it right. “My comment to that is go and check out PlayStation VR and join the 40 million people who already own the PlayStation 4 who will be able to enjoy a fantastic PlayStation VR experience. I’ve got absolutely no doubts about the quality of the VR experience that PlayStation VR offers to everybody that owns a PlayStation 4.”
That being said, don’t expect 40 million PlayStation VR owners at launch but Sony is working on meeting demand. “We have some pre-orders [numbers], but at the end of the day you never really know until you launch. It’s all speculation and matching of supply to demand. What I can say is that production is going very well, it’s entirely on track. We will have a proper PlayStation launch for PlayStation VR.
“We will, unlike other consoles, be launching in every major European market on the same day, October 13th, that we launch in Japan and North America. Very important for me to be able to do that. We will have significant amounts of inventory, we’ll have inventory in stores, we’ll have inventory to fulfill pre-orders. Whether that’s enough, honestly I don’t know, but it will be a proper PlayStation launch.”
PlayStation VR is out in October 13th while PS4 Neo is still apparently coming out this year.