Cast your minds back a few months and you'll remember the big PlayStation Showcase that was meant to amaze and delight everyone, showing us what we can expect to be playing in the near future. In actuality, this showcase was extremely disappointing for a lot of fans, lacking the massive blockbuster exclusive reveals that PlayStation usually reserves for a show of such magnitude. Well, it turns out there may have been a reason for that.
According to Sony's latest financial report, several first-party titles intended to launch within the current fiscal year were internally delayed and pushed beyond March 2024. Sony claims that the "impact of changes in the launch dates of a portion of first-party titles" has negatively affected its fiscal year 2023 forecast, meaning these games will now release either at some point in mid/late 2024 or early 2025.
Sony obviously doesn't name the games that were internally delayed, though we can take a good guess based on what we're still waiting on release dates for. Stellar Blade is a promising looking title we've seen a lot of, though it may not fall under the "firsty-party" label since it's only being published by Sony.
There's also The Last of Us' multiplayer title that was reportedly delayed earlier this year, another game that Sony may have originally wanted to release in the next 8 months. It's also possible that Sony may have wanted the highly rumored Twisted Metal reboot to launch close to the release of the recent TV show, though the reported switch of developers from Lucid Games to FireSprite may have thrown those plans into disarray as well.
Apart from that, your guess is as good as mine. Obviously this is just conjecture, but these delays could possibly be the reason as to why the most recent PlayStation Showcase was full of vague CGI trailers. The games previously mentioned are only the ones that we know about or have been announced, and Sony could easily have had some unannounced titles in development that it was planning to reveal and then drop within a few months.
Team Asobi is reportedly working on something new, and it seems a little strange we haven't seen a new Astro Bot game for PS VR2 considering he's the company's hardware mascot. Demon's Souls developer Bluepoint and Days Gone developer Bend Studio have both been very quiet for a number of years now, as have several other high-profile devs outside of Naughty Dog and Insomniac. Hopefully we'll get some more news about what PlayStation's future looks like soon, because right now it's a little bit slim.