RE the various comments from ZhugeEX, Kagari, Navtra etc going back and forth on if the game was 'meant to be' at the previous PS5 showing alongside Athia... my take is this, based on the knowledge I have: in the grand scheme of things, this game was absolutely meant to be part of Sony's 'June drop' -- but this was the plan at the start of the year, before covid, when things shown at a Sony June media drop could then go on to have a presence at E3 and other major shows (presence could be simply having staff/spokespeople on stream and available for media interviews - doesn't necessarily mean playable).
So at the start of the year, that was to my knowledge absolutely the long-term plan. What I don't know and can't answer is how that changed in the face of Covid and the cancellation of in-person events; that impacts development but also any intended plans for promotion, right?
Anyway, what I'm saying is it's absolutely possible for both sides to be right in this: Zhuge says it was never gonna be at Sony's June event, Navtra says it was. I can say the original plan was a June reveal followed by elaboration in the following months, but that was pre-covid - it's very possible that as the virus took hold plans changed and it was never intended to be at the replacement, socially-distanced stream event.
This has happened a lot, I think. Everybody - Sony, MS, Nintendo, third parties - seems to be sitting on games that would've been announced in June so that they could put producers and directors in front of media at E3 or Gamescom or whatever. The cancellation of physical events has scattered announcements to the wind, which is fair enough. The perfect example is Nintendo & Mario, where Nintendo's E3 was gonna be led by Mario 30th celebrations, including presumably the game announcements... they held on to those announcements for another three months. For SE, it's not even just about covid, either - the start of the year was turbulent with FF7 and Avengers delays, which surely shifted their calendar around.
I will also say I think the game made less sense at that June event once the parameters seemed to settle on it being an event to more strictly showcase PS5's technical ability, thus the impressive Ratchet/Horizon demos etc. In that sense, Athia fit better, as Athia is SE's forward-looking, visually mindblowing project on new tech more-so than the next FF, which afaik will use a tried-and-true existing engine.
