“They could still have some fun announcements. They could start bolstering the expectations for 2026,” said Grubb. “I think, internally, it sounds like they’re debating, flopping between making something in the summer a full showcase versus another State of Play.

“But they are considering a showcase. And if they have a showcase, that means they’ll have a lot of stuff to talk about. And at that point, you would definitely expect to see [Marvel’s] Wolverine and a lot of other games that could come out next year.”

Grubb also spoke about the absence of Bungie’s next multiplayer title, Marathon. Talking about why the game wasn’t teased or showcased in any capacity during the recent State of Play, Grubb said that the game will likely have its own showcase.

“Marathon wasn’t here because they’re probably going to do their own thing,” said Grubb. “Bungie does their own thing usually for Destiny. They’re going to adopt that same ‘we’re talking to our audience’ strategy this year as well. So I think April we probably hear from [Bungie] about Marathon, which will be its own thing separate from a State of Play.”

Bungie first unveiled Marathon all the way back in 2023. A departure from the classic Marathon trilogy of shooters, the new take on the game will be multiplayer-focused. The company has been relatively quiet since the game’s original announcement, though it’s promised to expand playtests this year.

Sony’s recent State of Play event had quite a few new trailers and announcements. Alongside giving us a launch trailer for the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom revealed during that Mizutsune will be joining the game’s roster of monsters in its first post-launch free update. There is another free update planned for Summer, which will also be bringing in a mysterious monster.

The event also showed us a new PixelJunk game in the form of Dreams of Another, the next major game in the Digimon Story series dubbed Time Stranger, the release date for HELL is Us, and the shadow launch for Warriors: Abyss, among many others.

Henderson noted the lack of the rumored Horizon x LEGO title before adding that it may be announced at either Summer Game Fest on June 7th or “the PlayStation Showcase towards the end of the year.” Leaker Midori indicated that there would be more first-party announcements from Sony Interactive Entertainment at the former, so it isn’t impossible for the new Horizon title to appear.

However, the PlayStation Showcase is arguably more intriguing. If it arrives around November/December, it could highlight Sony’s major releases heading into 2025. The company already confirmed no new titles in “existing major franchises” for the current fiscal year, though it could just as easily host another State of Play early next year. As always, time will tell, so take things with a grain of salt and remember that plans could always change.

The announcement will reportedly offer a gameplay preview and some playable characters. It follows billbil-kun’s report from January about it being “heavily inspired” by Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series. Interestingly, they’re unsure if the announcement will occur at Sony’s alleged showcase or during Summer Game Fest.

A cinematic trailer could drop during the former, with gameplay revealed during the latter on June 7th. Time will tell, so stay tuned for updates.

Concord is coming to PS5 and PC, with Sony recently reaffirming a release in 2024. Game director Ryan Ellis touted it as offering a “unique universe of vibrant worlds” and a “rich cast of colorful characters” last year. Head here for more details.

“I’ve heard a State of Play is coming, and this feels like a lead-in for that.” Given how State of Play can showcase a handful of games or one major title, it seems likely. Of course, it could also provide more details on PlayStation Portal, Sony’s streaming handheld for the PS5, which launches in late 2023.

Unfortunately, there haven’t been many rumors about another PlayStation Showcase. “I don’t know. I just haven’t heard about one,” said Grubb, responding to another Twitter user. It could really go either way.

Plans could change, especially with the rumored PlayStation event in August (where the PS5 Slim was alleged to be revealed) not happening. It’s also possible that Sony will showcase some of its titles at the Tokyo Games Show from September 21st to 24th. Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime.

I've heard a State of Play is coming, and this feels like a lead-in for that. https://t.co/0ptA09CyDW

— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) August 31, 2023

I don't know. I just haven't heard about one.

— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) August 31, 2023

At this point, it’s hardly a controversial statement. Hyped for months by speculation fuelled by “insiders”, as well as the fact that this was the first PS Showcase in almost two years (and also the longest one in almost a half decade), plus the fact that Sony currently had no announced upcoming first party games in the pipeline except for Spider-Man 2, and the fact that these showcases have a history of never disappointing and always coming through with the hype… yeah, it’s easy to see why people were disappointed. Because here’s the thing, while the showcase itself was actually not too bad, it was a disappointment under the specific frame of context that people approached it with: which was, the announcement of new projects from Sony, new first party games from their studios, a look at what PlayStation fans can expect for their console in the coming months and years. And they really didn’t get that.

The show had a great smattering of interesting and unique looking indie games (most or all of them also coming to at least one, but usually all, of PC, Xbox, and Switch); a bunch of great multiplatform games such as Alan Wake II (all of which are also coming to PC and Xbox); not one but two new first party IPs announced by Sony, which sounds great until you realize that both seemed to be PvP shooter live service games (the exact opposite of the audience Sony has cultivated with these shows), from brand new developers, shown only with CG announcement trailers (meaning that, with no familiarity with IP, studio, or gameplay, there is very literally nothing to be hyped about); a new Marathon game by Bungie, which is coming not just to PS5, and not just to PC, but also to Xbox; another look at Final Fantasy 16 (a game that at this point runs a Deathloop and Metroid Dread style risk of getting overexposed); the announcement of the long awaited MGS3 remake (except we saw no gameplay footage, barely saw any footage, and also, this remake is also coming to everything else as well); and an extended look at Spider-Man 2, which looks awesome.

The problem, of course, is not that these third party games are multiplatform – that’s a great thing, and the sooner holdouts like Square Enix get the memo, the better – but that Sony themselves brought almost nothing to supplement them. The new games they brought are not only all new IPs by new developers with not a second of footage shown (except Marathon), but they are also none of them exclusive to PS5 and also coming to PC (except, again, Marathon, which is coming to Xbox alongside PC and PS5 as well). For people who wanted the epic new games Sony has become synonymous with – well, where were those games?

It was not an unreasonable question. Between Polyphony Digital, Team Asobi, Guerrilla Games, Media Molecule, Sony Santa Monica, Sony Bend, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Insomniac Games, Bluepoint Games, and Housemarque, Sony has a bunch of great studios with award winning pedigree for people to expect new games from. This is not even counting any partnerships with independent studios they may have (such as Kojima Productions), the new studios they helped set up and/or acquire (which all went towards their GAAS push), or potential third party collaborations, such as the ones they had with FromSoftware, which netted us the amazing Bloodborne, and also Demon’s Souls, which unwittingly changed the landscape of the modern gaming industry forever. With so many studios, where exactly were the kinds of games people expect from Sony? Past Sony shows frequently lined up multiple upcoming epic adventures from Sony studios on a literal annual basis (for a few years, more frequently than that). How is it that, with two years since the last show and no major new single player game announced since then, Sony was still able to bring nothing to the table with this show?

Well, let’s try and think about this for a bit and see where it takes us. Sony Santa Monica just released God of War Ragnarok not even a half year ago, and while a second team under Cory Barlog has apparently been working on a new IP all this time (maybe even since the release of God of War 2018), maybe, sure, with work on Ragnarok, they haven’t had the time or resources to be able to put forth anything to show yet. That’s sensible, we can all understand that. Guerrilla Games is in a similar position, where they not only released Horizon: Forbidden West last year, but they also just released its Burning Shores expansion last month, plus whatever assistance they provided for the VR spin-off Call of the Mountain. Obviously they have started work on their next project (presumably the third Horizon game), but if so, it is surely very early, early enough that there is nothing to show right now. That’s sensible too.

We can make a similar argument for Polyphony Digital too (who also happens to be a notoriously slow developer at the best of times); Housemarque had Returnal out in 2021, and while two years is traditionally enough time in development to be able to show off something, game development now is more complicated than it ever has been before, and also, this two year period includes the pandemic

and the lockdowns that brought to the picture, further complicating matters.

Bluepoint had Demon’s Souls come out in late 2020, meaning it’s been two and a half years since; similar to Housemarque, they probably have not made enough headway to be able to show off what they are working on right now. Team Asobi had Astro’s Playroom out at that exact same time, so not only do the exact same considerations apply, but they are also a pretty small team to begin with, who will probably take longer to get their new game out than other studios might. Media Molecule is a tiny team that launched Dreams in early 2020, and just ended support for it last month. Assuming they started work on their next project some time in the intervening three years (probably after Dreams‘ failure became apparent), you can, again, understand why they have nothing to show (especially with, again, the pandemic being a thing).

Which leaves four studios – Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Sony Bend. Insomniac, of course, is the one Sony studio consistently announcing, showing, and then releasing games this generation (Spider-Man 2 will be their third game for the PS5 since 2020, and a fourth one in Wolverine is already on the way), and they also happened to have provided the one bright spot Sony’s conference had in the eyes of many fans, so they’re exempt from this discussion.

And then there are the other three, which is a bit harder to parse.

Sucker Punch released Ghost of Tsushima for the PS4 in 2020, three years ago; they also released Director’s Cut, along with a standalone expansion Iki Island, a year later. In the intervening three years, I would ordinarily argue that they should have made enough headway into their new project to be able to bring at least something to the show, but given that Sucker Punch, while a big studio, is a one team developer, and that pandemic happened in this period, I think we can see enough of a case for why they weren’t there. Sony Bend’s Days Gone was in 2019, four years ago, but Bend as a whole saw a lot of turbulent restructuring and personnel shuffling in the wake of that game’s release, and also, it remains a pretty small outfit (it’s still under 100 people). With those two factors, as well as, yet again, the pandemic, we can maybe see why they had nothing to show yet (though this one is probably the flimsiest justification of all the ones so far).

Which brings me to Naughty Dog.

Naughty Dog is my favorite Sony studio. Naughty Dog is actually one of my favorite studios in general. The Last of Us was excellent, and The Last of Us Part 2 is one of the best games ever made. Naughty Dog is also a studio with multiple teams, and we explicitly know they have been working on multiple projects since Part 2 came out, one of them a multiplayer take on the Last of Us universe. Surely they, of all the studios, would have something to show after three years? Anything, even a teaser? At least of their multiplayer game, which initially we had been promised we would get to see more of this year?

Nope, they brought nothing either. And this… also makes sense. Not only did Naughty Dog actually have a release just last year in The Last of Us Part 1 for PS5 (and then the botched PC port this year, which was also handled directly by them), but their multiplayer game is an entirely new style of game for them, which probably takes longer for them to get right than it would had it been something they were more familiar with (also, apparently, as we learned after the showcase, it is facing a fair few development issues along the way, to the point that it is not clear whether or not we actually get see to see it this year after all). There is that last new project (whether it be TLOU3 or a new IP), and assuming that has been worked on since 2020 when TLOU2 came out, you would expect three years to be more than enough to show some of it… but then we have pandemic throwing a wrench in things, plus games themselves taking longer than they ever have before to be developed.

There is a reason I did this deep dive, and that is to point out that not only have these last few years been besot by a series of challenges that probably means development on projects is running behind to the extent that lining up multiple exciting announcements like in the past is simply not feasible; but also to point out that game development itself is now taking long enough that the kind of Sony conference we have become accustomed to, where they had a line of multiple exciting new announcements from their first party studios (remember when they announced God of War, Days Gone, Spider-Man, Death Stranding, The Last Guardian, and Detroit: Become Human all at the same show during E3 2016?) is simply not feasible.

These games are on staggered development cycles, and those cycles are now long enough to last the better part of a decade consistently and across the board. This means that, by simple chronological happenstance, it is very unlikely (if not outright impossible) that Sony will ever have enough upcoming projects all ready to show at the same time that they get to have a show like that ever again.

Look, this is part of the bargain – I have been talking about the flip side of the never ending march towards “next generation” tech, better graphics, bigger games, and so on for years, but yes, the simple fact of the matter is that modern games development now takes far too long. In the PS3 era, games could be developed on 2-3 year cycles, meaning you always had something in the chambers ready and waiting from multiple developers. In the PS4 era, the dev cycles moved up to 3-4 years on average, touching 5 years on the upper side, which made it slightly harder to line up announcements like that (and made game releases less frequent), but given the number of studios Sony had, still allowed them enough breathing room to be able to pull out all stops multiple times.

But now? Even without the pandemic, games will probably be taking 5 years or more to develop at a time. If the average development cycle lasts 5-6 years, then not only do game releases become much sparser than before (which we are already beginning to see), but Sony is officially out of runway space necessary to be able to have a cavalcade of hype inducing announcements like they used to. It is a simple reality of the tech being as resource intensive as it is now – it is part of the bargain of demanding “next generation” tech.

This doesn’t let Sony off the hook completely, of course – they could have, for example, managed expectations better (either by making it clear that there wouldn’t be much first party content at the show, or by simply branding it a State of Play, so that expectations would be more tempered to begin with), and they still could have at least shown Death Stranding 2 (which at this point I am sure will be at Geoff Keighley’s Summer Games Fest); they could have paced the show better, they could have tried to show off gameplay footage for the games they did bring, they could have done any number of things to ensure this show was received better than it was.

But ultimately, it is high time that PlayStation fans stop kidding themselves and make their peace with the simple fact of the matter that, games development takes time. More time than ever before now, and that’s without accounting for circumstances such as the pandemic. This is part of the deal when you ask for cutting edge tech, which you have now received. Make your peace with it, and show more empathy to the creatives working on the games you love, rather than screaming at them for not showing up with trailers for games when you wanted to see them.

That, or be willing to accept a slower advance in technology, with more conservative specs and tech, like Nintendo does. Of course, it did still take them six years to make Tears of the Kingdom…

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Journalist Jeff Grubb has previously claimed that a PlayStation Showcase is planned for June, and in a recent tweet, he provided some more brief details on when exactly to expect it. According to Grubb, the PlayStation Showcase will happen in the first week of June, before the aforementioned Summer Game Fest, which is set for June 8.

What exactly can we expect from the event though? While precise details remain scant, Grubb has previously claimed that it will be a “massive” showcase that will “set up the second phase of the PlayStation 5” and include a number of major first party reveals and updates.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is due out this Fall and is allegedly targeting a September release, so it’s likely to be one of the games that Sony will show off. Meanwhile, Naughty Dog has also said that it plans to provide details in the coming months about its standalone The Last of Us multiplayer game.

E3 is dead, and I killed it. And now I'm going to honor it by holding it up Weekend At BerniE3's-style alongside Jeff Grubb's #summergamemess

Thank you to all of the Jeff Grubb's Summer Game Mess partners for participating whether you want to or not.

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO pic.twitter.com/qewAmVOVkZ

— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) March 31, 2023

The credibility of the account is up in the air, especially when the bio outright says it’s not always accurate. However, when shared with Xbox Era co-founder Nick Baker, he revealed this to be the same date conveyed to him. His source said they heard that the showcase is “apparently” on September 8th.

They had “three different people tell me September 8th within about 20 minutes of each other. I know dates get changed very last second, but it sounds like they want to go before Disney.” The last bit refers to the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase at D23 Expo 2022 on September 9th, which will provide a sneak peek at Skydance New Media’s upcoming Marvel game.

As for the PlayStation Showcase, time will tell. Baker is also not 100 percent sure if it’s happening on September 8th. But with PlayStation VR2 apparently coming next year and God of War Ragnarok out in November, September seems a good time to showcase them both. Stay tuned for further details in the coming weeks.

https://twitter.com/News0Videogames/status/1560648117472600066

https://twitter.com/Shpeshal_Nick/status/1561686702451613696

In a follow-up tweet, they noted that, “The same source told me a few weeks ago that no big showcase was planned until September.” This is apparently where Sony will announce the long-rumored new Sly Cooper. Interestingly, another announcement seems to be taking place in the same month though further details weren’t provided.

While plans could change, this isn’t too far off from what VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb recently said. Grubb heard from “multiple people” that Sony may have a show in the first week of June but couldn’t confirm it for himself. Afterwards, he also mentioned hearing about nothing happening until September, which lines up with AccountNgt’s source.

Time – and an official announcement from Sony – will tell so take things with a grain of salt and stay tuned for more details.

https://twitter.com/accngt/status/1528845506109181955

https://twitter.com/accngt/status/1528863934765486080

Sony’s PlayStation Experience is returning in 2016 and will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California from December 3rd to 4th. Along with 4K TVs and PlayStation VR, VR demos will also be on hand for fans to try out. The PlayStation 4 Pro will also be present for those who haven’t picked one up when it arrives in November.

PlayStation Showcase will also be back and kicking off the event once doors open at 10 AM on December 3rd. It’s still unsure what we’ll see but you can bet it will be live-streamed. The Capcom Cup Tourney is also scheduled for 6 PM with Street Fighter 5 players competing for more than $250,000 and the title of world champion.

Given how last year’s PlayStation Experience featured Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we have high expectations from this year’s version. What could be in store this year? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information.