Sony looks to be mixing things up this E3, eschewing their traditional conference format. Instead of the typical hour or so of showing brief clips of upcoming titles with speakers interspersed, it looks like we’ll be getting a “deep dive” on four key upcoming PS4 exclusives. Sony’s E3 will give us intimate details about Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, and The Last of Us 2, as well as some 3rd party announcements.
The change in format from Sony’s traditional E3 plans was announced on the Official PlayStation Blogcast. In it, Shawn Layden, Chairman of Worldwide Studios, explained that the focus of Sony’s E3 would be on four Sony exclusive titles in particular. Guerilla Studios’ The Last of Us 2, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima are both Sony Worldwide Studio titles, while Kojima Production’s Death Stranding and Insomniac’s Spider-Man are nominally third-party exclusives.
This is a significant change for Sony, who is known for its rapid-fire conferences that tend to engender a lot of excitement (and blow the competition out of the water). However, just because the emphasis seems to be on deep dives this year, doesn’t mean it won’t still have a separate, more traditional conference.
As to why Sony has decided to move to an in-depth look at a few games instead of small tastes of a lot of titles, we don’t know. One reason may be that it felt like those four big titles may overshadow any other titles presented and it may be reserving other announcements for another time.
I’m excited to see more on all of those titles, but the one I’m far and away most pumped to see more of is Death Stranding. I love the Metal Gear series, and I really want to look at what Kojima comes up with when not constrained to that universe. P.T. showed that he definitely has the chops to move out into other genres and from what little we’ve seen of Death Stranding it looks to be an absolute trip.
