One of the keys to the early success of the PlayStation 4 was its release date. When Sony took the stage in February last year to reveal the PS4, everyone was a bit taken aback, Sony included. Speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton, SCEI President Andrew House admitted that although Sony wasn’t prepared to show off the new console at the time, the company knew that it wanted to be the first on the scene.
“I think we were probably earlier in the announce than we have been previously, and that was very deliberate,” said House. “I wanted to be out there first with the first announcement for this generation so you’ve got an opportunity to stake the ground and hopefully take something of a leadership position. Again, we’d had the experience of launching later than our competitor and that played very heavily to many of the thought processes and decisions made about PlayStation 4.”
In retrospect, it’s clear that Sony made the right decision by getting out in front of the new generation before Microsoft had a chance to respond. In fact, it took three full months before the Xbox One would finally be revealed in a separate press conference.
Even without a machine to show off, Sony still managed to capture the imagination of the audience, avoiding any of the pitfalls that Microsoft managed to encounter in the months that followed.
