Sony's E3 2017 press conference featured a bunch of games, but very few specific release dates. According to Sony Interactive Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, this was an intentional move from Sony.
It appears as though Sony has been burned in the past by continuously pushing back release dates to allow developers more time to work on their games. This time around, Sony decided to go for a general release window so developers could have more time.
Yoshida relayed the following to Greg Miller during Gamespot’s E3 2017 live show:
"Actually, that was really intentional. Like, Gran Turismo Sport coming Fall 2017, or God of War coming early 2018.
"Because in the past we had announced release dates of many games that we had to apologize and push back. PlayStation 4 games are so big that even veteran teams who have been developing games for over ten years still miscalculate how much work has to be done in the very last part of the development with polishing, debugging, etc.
"So, we agreed not to announce a release date until very, very, very close to the release date. That puts a lot of challenge to our marketing and sales teams, but they understood and agreed to let us announce a release window, like a season: Fall, early or Spring, until we are close to the big finish.
"That’s the reason we didn’t announce the actual dates."
If anyone can recall the emotional rollercoaster than lead us to The Last Guardian's release, then they know what Sony was looking to avoid.
