E3 is still fresh in the memory, but Sony has already turned its attention to Europe’s biggest games convention, Gamescom, which takes place from August 21-25 in Cologne, Germany. While the firm’s PS4 reveal event in February was accompanied by the announcement of games including Knack, Killzone: Shadow Fall and Driveclub, completely new first party software was notably absent at E3, excluding Ready At Dawn’s The Order: 1886.
In an interview with Gamereactor, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan said the company wanted to hold back some surprises for August’s German trade show. "We very consciously at the [PS4 reveal] event in New York on February 20 showed a lot of software, a lot of first party software. What we did at E3 was really show some updates to those games and introduce The Order: 1886,” he said.
"There's a lot [of games] coming," Ryan added. "I'm sure you heard from Shuhei [Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios] that he has, just from his studios, 30 games in development. 20 are going to ship within the first year of the console's life and of those 12 are new IPs, so there's a lot going on. It's just that we need to keep stuff back. We've got Gamescom for us Europeans and we need something to show at Gamescom."
Sony revealed the actual PS4 hardware for the first time during its E3 press conference, where it also announced a Christmas release date in Europe and the US and a PS4 price of £349 / €399 / $399. Multiple European retailers recently began listing the PS4 launch date as November 13, 2013 although Sony told us the suggested release date was “pure speculation”.
