Is 2021 Sony's Worst Year, First Party Wise, in the past decade?

[Shaunodon]

twintail said:

Shaunodon said:

Far as I remember, Covid-19 did exist when they announced it. If 2021 was an unrealistic target, there's no reason they should've set that as a goal. If they were uncertain about how badly affected they would be, even more reason to not set false expectations.

Of course, it's only false expectations for people who chose to take them at their word. 'Planned 2021' was always just an optimistic hope deliberately phrased to misinform. No different than the previous idea that Sony exclusives going forward would be dedicated to the PS5 without last-gen holding them back.. until they weren't.

There's no reason to suspect that end 2021 was an unrealistic goal. For all intents and purposes, they probably still believed in June 2020 that they could hit that date. The Netherlands didn't impose a lockdown until December 2020. We don't know to what extent this affected them (or their partner studios), but clearly it was enough to push Horizon past an early November release.

Maybe they did know they were never going to hit 2021, but 6 months is a long time in which work possibly went smoothly enough before it didn't. 

No reason, other than the fact that we know now that it won't and a good amount of people predicted this. So yes, no reason, as long as you ignore all prior and current evidence. As long as you give them every benefit of the doubt. But what is their track record on meeting planned relase dates, especially early in console life cycles?

We don't know how much the Covid situation affected them, just like they couldn't have predicted in June of last year (already in the middle of Covid) how it would affect them. So how could they be assured 2021 was still realistic?