No PlayStation Experience for 2018

By Liz Lanier

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Sony won’t be holding a Experience this year, according to a statement from Shawn Layden during  Friday’s episode of the PlayStation Blogcast .

Layden, chairman of Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, said that it was a “hard decision.”

PlayStation Experience started four years ago as a celebration for PlayStation’s 20th anniversary as a way to “bring fans together” for a consumer event, according to Layden. The event expanded over the next few years as a place to give news updates. This year, though Layden expressed that “we have a lot of progress that we’re making in our games” but also that there’s not much to share at this point for upcoming titles.

“Now that we have ‘Spiderman’ out the door, we’re looking down in 2019 to games like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Days Gone’ but we wouldn’t have enough to bring people altogether in some location in North America to have that event,” Layden said.”We don’t want to set expectations really high and then not deliver on it.”

Layden expressed some regret over not holding a PlayStation Experience this year, because of the function it served in past years.

“It became a great place to bring new news, to let [fans] get closer to some of the new stuff we’re working on,” Layden said of past PlayStation Experience events.