Why didn’t Sony show the PS4 earlier?

When Sony first announced the PlayStation 4 back in February of 2013, the company talked about what it plans for the console in the future, the type of experiences fans will have and how it will focus on the games this time.

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One thing that Sony didn’t talk about, or show in this instance, was just what the PS4 console itself would look like.

Sony’s Mark Cerny pulled out the DualShock 4 controller for the world to see for the first time, but the PS4 was nowhere to be found. At a Q&A during the Develop Conference on Wednesday, Sony’s Andrew House explained why no one saw the actual PS4 system until E3 later that year.

“I think we were probably earlier in the announce than we have been previously, and that was very deliberate,” House stated. “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.”

There were a number of rumors for why Sony didn’t reveal the console during its press event in New York City back in February 2013. From wanting to counter Microsoft for whenever it decided to reveal the Xbox One to the company not having the final design ready yet, there was no shortage of rumors.

However, House said the speculation didn’t make sense to him nor the company as a whole.

“This is one where I think honestly we were a little caught off guard and wrong-footed,” House said. “If you look back at our history of previous reveals, we generally always went with explaining what the concept would be, articulating what package the overall consumer experience was going to be and then later revealing the hardware. So this felt very natural and normal to us.”

Sound off FanSiders! Do you think it was ultimately a good idea to hold off on the reveal of the PS4 console design until E3 last year? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.