At some point in mid-January, it was almost certain that Sony would unveil its next generation console, the PlayStation 5, in February. That’s what she did with the PS4, after all, at a special event in New York on February 20, 2013. We all assumed that the company would do something similar this time, both because there were no other official plans and because Microsoft had already revealed the form factor and name of the Xbox Series X at the Game Awards. It was Sony’s turn, we all thought, and for a moment we said that the revelation planned for February was a kind of “open secret”.
Well, it’s currently February 29, and I don’t think Sony will invite journalists and reveal the PS5 by the end of the day. They even had a whole bonus day!
Sony’s plans to reveal the PS5 remain a mystery, although Microsoft released a large amount of new information this week, including impressive technical numbers. From Sony, we mostly had two articles in Wired, and silence since.
At this point, some sort of PlayStation reunion in the months to come seems difficult, if not impossible: gaming conventions and competitions of all kinds have been canceled as the coronavirus epidemic continues to grow, and last night the Game Developer’s Conference has announced that it will be postponed until the summer. E3 said his plans have not been affected by the coronoavirus, but it remains to be seen how quickly the disease will spread and how long its effects will last.
This leads to an anxious and uncertain environment in all economic sectors, including the gaming industry. We do not know if Sony has pushed back all plans behind the scenes as the possibility of a pandemic has become clearer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. It is also possible that the virus will affect the production of the console if it is not contained in the next two months or so.
So far, people have worked with what happened the last generation: that the two main manufacturers would have their own revealing events followed by additional events at E3 (Sony has already withdrawn from E3, but nothing prevents it from publishing a video around the same time). It is all different now, and we can probably assume that it will not happen that way.
So, for the moment, we remain hooked. At this point, there is the element of indoor baseball, that this information will be disseminated in some way before the holiday season, and that there is still a lot of time to raise awareness and hype before these things go on sale. But there are a lot of moving parts here: publishers, for example, are probably hesitant to share more about their next generation plans until Sony reveals more. At this point, I have to assume that the coronavirus had an impact on the revelation plans in one way, one form or one form, but it is unclear how.