PlayStation is back on the Tokyo Game Show floor. Tokyo Game Show, Japan’s biggest games industry trade expo, announced a long list of confirmed exhibitors yesterday. Among them was a surprise: PlayStation will return to the Makuhari Messe this coming September as an exhibitor.
It marks the publisher’s first appearance at Tokyo Game Show since 2019. What does that mean, “as an exhibitor”? It means PlayStation will have a booth on the show floor to exhibit its games. It has not done this anywhere in quite some time.
PlayStation has developed an aversion to trade shows like TGS over the last decade or so. In 2018, it became the first major publisher to pull the pin on E3 , a blockbuster move at the time. It believed (correctly) that it could save quite a bit of money by aping Nintendo’s direct-to-consumer video strategy, and have press and influencers preview upcoming titles in smaller, more tightly controlled environments.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which cancelled several years of tradeshows, only reinforced this strategy. It’s hard to deny it’s been a success — it certainly seems to have worked out pretty well for them so far. The news also comes a fortnight after PlayStation confirmed it would not attend or exhibit at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, this year.
Like TGS, PlayStation has not appeared at Gamescom since 2019. All of this begs the question: why the sudden change of direction? It’s hard to say. One notable and recent change at PlayStation is that it i.
