The surprise hit of this year was Until Dawn, the PS4 exclusive cinematic horror game, that sort of came out of nowhere, and ended up being a hit with the critics and the audience alike. The success of Until Dawn was unexpected- especially given that The Order 1886, a game with a similar cinematic bent, had already bombed earlier this year, and also because Sony pretty much just released it without much marketing.
Developers Supermassive Games don’t hold that lack of marketing against Sony, though- they think Sony did the best they could have, given the kind of game that Until Dawn is.
“If a game is quite different to what’s come before, it must be difficult to know exactly what to do, who to aim the marketing at, and what the message should be,” they told PlayStation Lifestyle. “Even if the strength of the push wasn’t as big as we’d have liked, there was a huge amount of creativity in the way that Sony promoted Until Dawn.”
In the end, the game still sold well, and they are already exploring a sequel, so I am sure they don’t begrudge Sony the stinginess with the marketing- though I do wonder how they might have felt had the game bombed.