Sony's Biggest E3 Flops Over the Years

biggest e3 flops

Sony has had some pretty stellar E3 showings as of late, but we must remember that it wasn’t always thus. Last generation was especially hard on Sony. Sure, it had Kevin Butler, but it also had the ApocalyPS3 of 2011, where Jack Tretton marched out on stage and apologized to everyone in the room. The PlayStation 3 went from “it only does everything” to “it only does 80710a06” in less than a month (I still have that T-shirt, actually). That was a dark time in PlayStation history.

The PlayStation has had a few other swings and misses when it came to E3 announcements. Some should have done well, since they looked good on paper, and others flopped harder than a professional soccer player before the press conference ended. Here are PlayStation’s biggest E3 flops over the years.

Did we miss any? Let us know what you think were Sony’s biggest E3 fails below!

Essential Reading:

Sony's Biggest E3 Flops

Remember this controller idea?

Woof.
E3 2006 - Dat PS3 Price Doe

E3 2006. The Xbox 360 released the year before and was a raging success. This was the E3 for Sony and Nintendo to step it up with their next-gen console announcements. We knew the PlayStation 3 was coming. We'd seen the specs. We'd seen the pics of that horrible boomerang controller. But what was this going to COST us, Sony?

A bucketload, evidently.

The 20GB PS3 cost $499 and the 60GB cost $599. That was unheard of in 2006. It didn't take long for people to do the math and figure out they could own an Xbox 360 AND a Wii for the same price, and both had far better game libraries. The one thing the PS3 did have going for it price-wise was that it was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market.
E3 2007 - PlayStation Home

PlayStation Home had a lot of great ideas, but none of them caught on. PCs had a few virtual world applications, but the console market had nothing like it.

Enter PlayStation Home. Sony offered a virtual space for users to come online, meet other users with similar interests, and build their own personal space within that world. Unfortunately, the only way to truly customize your personal space and your avatar was to pay for it. Sony tried to implement games for these virtual users to play with one another, but no one was that interested when the Xbox 360 had a far easier method of playing games together.
E3 2009 - PSPgo

Quoted as the "worst kept secret," the PSPgo was officially announced at E3 2009. It was a super slim, rather cute, and rather small model of the PSP, but it only allowed digital games. Those games you bought for your PSP on the UMD? Yeah, tough. There's no way to get a digital equivalent for free, or, in some cases, a digital equivalent at all.

The world just wasn't ready for the digital-only media push that Sony wanted, and it didn't take long for the tiny handheld to crash and burn. It didn't help that the PSPgo cost only $50 less than the PS3 at the time, and many complained that the small design was very uncomfortable.
E3 2010 - PlayStation Move

Nintendo was raking in the money with their motion-controlled Wii, so naturally, Sony wanted some of that sweet success of their own. Their idea was the PlayStation Move.

Their E3 demo for it was enticing, especially when they rolled Sorcery out on the screen. Sorcery never did live up to the expectation it set in 2010, and the other Move games never caught on either. If it wasn't for PSVR, these little light-up lollipops might never have seen the light of day again.
E3 2011 - PlayStation Vita

It pains me to say it, but the PlayStation Vita has been a bit of a flop since its 2011 announcement. Like other Sony announcements, it had a world of possibilities, especially with its Remote Play features and gorgeous OLED screen. But it never really took off, despite everything it has to offer.

It didn't help that Sony seemed to drop it like a bad habit within just a couple of years. Who knows where the Vita could be if it had proper support from the parent company (and a decent Uncharted game for the Vita).
E3 2012 - Wonderbook

If you saw Sony's 2012 E3 press conference, either in person or on G4TV, you will never forget that painful experience of watching the Wonderbook demonstration fail on-stage. Ten minutes of uncomfortable torture as the demonstrator's Move controller refused to read the physical book. The line to check out Wonderbook was practically non-existent on the showroom floor.

It actually did well with kids enough to get a sequel, but game sales mostly went to the hardcore gamer preferences. It didn't help that Wonderbook released the same day as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
E3 2014 - PlayStation TV

I suppose as a way to try to entice people to play Vita games, Sony introduced the PlayStation TV. The big hype behind it was that you could now play Vita games on your TV, but no one was buying Vita games sooooooooo, yeah.

Sony later implemented Remote Play with it and the ability to stream PlayStation Now, but that wasn't enough. It went from $99 to $19.99 in less than a year.
E3 2014 - The Order: 1886

Oh E3 2014, you were so amazing in so many ways (like dat PS4 pricing doe), and you knew how to get us so excited. The Order: 1886 was everything we wanted from the next-generation of consoles: gorgeous visuals, incredible atmosphere, and lots of action.

But then it was delayed. And delayed. And delayed yet again. When it finally released, it disappointed gamers around the globe. Instead of that robust experience we saw at E3, we had a glorified tech demo with a great story buried underneath.

This one hurts me deeply, as I expected (and wanted) so much from this title. What hurts even more is the fact that I really want a sequel to explore more of this world's lore, and I know it will never come.