No one will ever forget the disastrous E3 reveal of the PS3. A HUGE console with an equally huge price. Backwards compatibility was promised then pulled back before the console launched, not to mention the anemic list of launch titles when compared to it's counterpart the XBox 360. It was a reveal that Sony has spent every year since trying to forget. Yesterdays (Sept. 16th, 2020) reveal might just have been even worse.
It started off just great, it was everything that Playstation fans were clamoring for. Amazing games that look way better than they ever have exclusive to the platform of their choice. We got launch dates, we got gameplay, we got EVERYTHING we ever could have wanted except for one very important little detail. When we could preorder the damn things. Officially preorders weren't supposed to go live till this morning. In actual fact they went live right after the event. In fact the preorders went live so close to the event that most of the fan base were caught completely off guard. Re-sellers and their bots swooped in and scarffed up the available systems so fast that by the time word got out preorders were gone. What few actual players that did manage to get their hands on a system had to deal with websites crashing, log in issues and payments not being processed. To put it in the nicest possible way the preorders were an absolute shit show but the hits didn't stop there.
Spiderman: Miles Morales and Horizon: Forbidden West were games that were both revealed to be PS5 exclusives but in one of the many press releases that followed the event we found out that both games would be available on PS4. They wouldn't be the only new PS5 releases to be available on PS4 either. Many more games, as yet to be announced will also be available for PS4 in the coming years. While certain games like Final Fantasy XVI are PS5 exclusives on the surface at least, it looks like more games will be cross gen than not for the foreseeable future. To many players it would appear that Sony's commitment to next gen lasted about as long a Hollywood marriage.
So what the hell went wrong? How did Sony's messaging get so garbled that now it feels like they undercut their own hardware? In my own opinion it was one of three things:
Someone Screwed Up: Yeah I know this one should go without saying but many internet users are accusing Sony of making these moves intentionally for nefarious reasons. Nothing could be further from the case. Sony wants you to buy their products and intentionally screwing customers in this way would do the exact opposite. They don't want PS5s landing in the hands of re-sellers first, that's how people end up buying XBoxes or Switches. They know better than anyone that no matter how good the games' line up for a system is it's worthless if customers can't get the hardware to play them. If you stop and think about how sideways 2020 has gone for the gaming industry it's probably nothing short of a miracle Sony was able to make the video as good as it was (and it was damn good) so some errors in marketing should be unexpected. Still, to drop the ball as badly as Sony did means someone, somewhere wasn't doing their job. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a lot of apology messages in the coming days and maybe even a few silent layoffs.
Retailers gonna Retail: This is the most likely scenario in my mind for what should be obvious reasons. Consumer spending is in the toilet because of the pandemic and retailers are DESPERATE to rake in any amount of money and we already know that the biggest corporations aren't above dirty tricks to make that happen. Wal Mart was the first retailer to offer pre-orders on their websites and other retailers then followed suit in various time intervals. My guess is Wal Mart decided to play with the language in such a way as to justify opening preorders early even though they clearly weren't ready for it. The fact that other retailers only followed suit later in the day in my mind is what backs this up. Otherwise all of them would have been online at the same time and Sony itself would have made the correct announcement instead of saying the next day.
Sony called a last minute audible: Again, retailers gonna retail so it's just as likely that Sony changed their minds when they saw how much hype their presentation was creating. While I suspect Wal Mart of creatively interpreting Sony's message I tell you in the same breath that they may have also been just as blindsided as everyone else. The plain and simple fact of the matter is none of the retailers that were taking preorders were ready and it showed. Even Wal Mart's website suffered problems trying to sort through the onslaught of customers digitally busting down the website doors. If they were expecting pre-orders to go live 24 hours after they did then it could very well explain all the problems they were having. Other retailors coming on line later in the day supports this speculation as well. As for the press releases giving the wrong dates it's entirely possible that this change of procedure was done so last minute that the message didn't have time to filter through all the proper channels before shit started hitting the fan. And I'm talking the Triceratops pile of shit in Jurassic Park hitting a desk fan.
As for games being on next and previous gen consoles that is not something that simply happens with the press of a button. This was clearly the plan all along so why it wasn't stated that way from the beginning is anyone's guess. Whatever the reasons for either of these situations Sony is going to be on damage control for quite some time trying to sort this mess out. Microsoft may have just been handed an early lead on this gen on a silver platter.