Why would they wait until AC Red to show GoT 2?
The main revenue source for Sony is the revenue they get from 3rd parties, and Ubisoft is one of their main partners and AC their best selling IP, with over 20M copies per recent main title. Big seller 3P games are very important for Sony and are considering in their marketing strategy.
In fact, most years Sony has minimum one Ubisoft game with signed marketing deal (as last year with Avatar). So a big mainline AC, specially the one with the setting most people (including Yves Guillemot, whose suggestion got ignored by the team over a decade) have been asking in the AC history.
I don't remember if AC Red is one of the 2024 marketing deals that Sony has, but in any case AC Red is going to generate a lot of money for Sony via Sony's revenue share from sales+MTX and later with game subs.
Pretty likely, when scheduling and coordinating their marketing roadmaps they agreed to avoid competing between Sony and Ubisoft samurai games: until the end of this fiscal year, they only market gameplay of Ronin, with the ACR and GoT2 gameplay reveals scheduled for somewhere after Ronin release. Then from now until release late 2024/early 2025, AC Red gets the full marketing focus regarding and GoT2. And then somewhere after the AC Red release (maybe months, maybe years) GoT2 gets revealed and gets the full marketing focus regarding PS feudal Japan games.
If Got 2 is scheduled for a 2025-2026 release date
I think a late 2025 or early 2026 would be the most optimistic case (quicker development, shorter games, no delays, no covid affecting the studio, no MP mode, etc.), and late 2030 the most pessimistic one.
I think is more likely that the planned release is be somewhere in the middle. Maybe a late 2027/early 2028 release as PS6 launch game.
considering they're porting the first game to PC next month, I don't see any issue with them revealing GoT 2 at a Showcase this year, particularly if they want to get some hype moving 1P-wise for PS5 Pro's release later in 2024.
I think Sony won't want to hype the PS5 Pro before its release with games to be released maybe up to 2-6 years in the future.
I think that if they use games to hype the PS5 Pro before release, they'll use already released games, or games to be released late this year or early next year, which I bet won't be the case of GoT2.
I think they plan to release GoT2 relatively close to the movie, not to the PC port. I also think that won't make big discounts or price cut of the PC port until around the GoT2 announcement.
That is to say, if they have a game like GoT 2 that's two years out from release, and they have a PS5 Pro coming late this year
I think very likely Concord and Marathon will sell more than GoT2 and will be way closer to PS5 Pro release. They also will release games like Death Stranding 2 next year.
I don't think SIE are nearly as adverse to revealing games early anymore as some think
It would be interesting to make a list of their games released in the last 10 years, mentioning the time between their anouncement and their original announced release date (not counting delays added later), separating these groups, because I think each group has a separate range:
- New Marvel games
- New MLB gaames
- Internally developed games with IP not owned by Marvel or MLB
- 2nd party games
- PS5 remasters/remakes
- PC ports of old games
PHYSINT is a SIE co-developed game, it's basically a 1P property, and they revealed it this year back in February when it's likely not releasing until 2030.
Yes, Physint won't start its development until DS2 gets released. Meaning, Physint pretty likely will be released somewhere between 2030-2034. It is one of the rare exceptions where in recent years Sony announced a very distant game, as also happened with Wolverine.
So it's very possible they (SIE) could at least return to doing reveals 2 years out from release, maybe 3 years out for specific titles. If they get back to doing 1P AA titles, most of those could probably due with reveals around one year before release at most.
I may be wrong, but I'd say that with a few exceptions all -or most- Sony published games announced in a least the last 8 years or so were announced under 2 years before their release date planned at the moment of the announcement. In fact I'd say under a year and a half.
Meaning, I bet that -unless there's an exception with a teaser- all games to be shown in this May/June showcase would be games planned to be released in 2024 and 2025, maybe maximum Q1 2026.
