Sony may not host the usual PlayStation showcases, but they’ll actively participate in State of Play.
What we saw Sony achieved in 2024 is going to be the standard for other major publishers. They generally hold a State of Play every quarter, where we see some first-party participation. One thing that changed with Sony’s attitude to State of Play in 2024 was their willingness to PlayStation showcase new first-party titles like Astro Bot and Ghost of Yōtei.
Before 2024, they had never done these things in a State of Play. Those are announcements that would have typically been kept for PlayStation Showcases. However, Sony will no longer hold showcases outside of a new generation system launch, so there will be no display in 2025.
So, for this year, State of Play will be their new format moving forward. Essentially, we believe that by 2025, we will have discovered that Sony does not do PlayStation showcases except to learn more about the PlayStation 6. That is, once a generation, perhaps twice, we should expect a massive PlayStation Showcase.
Aside from that, we believe the norm will simply be a State of Play. But on the plus side, I believe that as a result, these State of Play events have a much better possibility of being significantly better and more interesting overall.