What's going on with Sony lately? It seems that missing E3 2019 wasn't enough, and now the company plans to skip San Diego Comic Con as well.
This year, like many other years, will see various big movie and TV studios gathering at Hall H at SDCC to show off their most exciting upcoming projects. Marvel, for instance, is expected to show some of its future plans, including the mysterious Phase 4. Netflix will be showing more of The Witcher, hopefully enough to indicate if it will be good.
Seeing Sony skip such a gathering is confusing. However, as a report from CBR indicates, the reason seems to be that Sony is simply too busy.
There's a little movie coming out this week called Spider-Man: Far From Home. Apparently the effort needed to market this movie, as well as Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, leaves Sony with its hands full. Too full to spend any time in San Diego this month.
The given explanation makes sense, and yet something seems a little off. After all, Sony also skipped E3 this year but didn't say anything about being too busy marketing Days Gone. Granted the game and movie divisions are probably entirely different, to the point where they employ separate marketing teams. Just because one decides to skip an event doesn't mean the other has to.
That point actually calls things further into question, however. Is it really just coincidence that two branches of Sony opted to miss out on big industry events just months apart? Or could we be seeing a company-wide push to stop relying on conventions for announcements? After all, Sony deliberately started its own "State of Play" video series to preview and announce upcoming games. The move seemed to indicate a shift away from E3, embracing a freer way of delivering news much like Nintendo's Direct.
Sadly, there isn't really a movie equivalent to State of Play. Distributors just sort of drop movie trailers online and hope they go viral. For that reason, Sony will probably return to SDCC at some point, perhaps even next year, to show off its movies. Nothing beats a packed convention hall when it comes to revealing a movie.