When I say Sony wasn't active in the promotion, I mean Sony took a laissez-faire approach rather than taking charge of Hello Game's PR. If you think Sony giving Hello Games a platform to promote NMS is an 'active' promotion, then sure, though now we would be going into semantics. Watching through the PSX video, you see that is mostly a Q&A. Yoshida is asking Sean Murray multiple questions and he answers them while further explaining about NMS. Again, if you want to interpret Yoshida's role as 'active', then okay. However, I would then ask you who was more 'active' in promoting NMS in the PSX video?

The situation is also different from SOT's since Hello Games is a 3rd party developer whereas Rare is a 1st party studio. Because Rare is owned by Microsoft, whenever Rare is promoting SOT, Microsoft is also effectively promoting SOT.

You should drop the ad hominem. Just address his points, not his character.

Not personally, no. I'm familiar with some of your posting habits however.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I deflected blame away from a 1st party dev? When?

...What reason would this be? I honestly don't know, I almost never read reviews.

How was it not an active promotion? Did Sean force himself onto Sony's platform? Was Shuhei Yoshida ambushed into doing that demo with Sean? I highly doubt any of these things occurred without Sony's permission. If so, I must applaud Sean. He's a clever man.

Doesn't seem all that different from Sony hosting NMS promotional content on their media outlets:

First or third party, promotion is promotion.

My sincerest apologies, perhaps you are correct that it was unfair of me to post that. I meant no offense, I just wanted to call to attention some of thismeintiel's apparent biases.

My apologies thismeintiel if you took offense.

I understand what you are trying to say, however this is a timed exclusive used to promote PlayStation. If this was a console multiplatform game from the start I would totally agree with you on that however it was not. This also affects Sony's image as well. They promoted a game for the PS audience and many went in expecting something completely different. That leaves a bad taste in gamers mouths. Sure it hasn't affected the PS4 brand in terms of sales however its just not a moral thing to do for your customers. Sony also needs to take responsibly for NMS since they were promoting the game heavily and it was a console exclusive for 2 years under the PlayStation Banner.

MS and Rare are taking the blame for SOTs lack of content so the same should be said for NMS and its marketing because it was the marketing that ruin the game, not the game itself. NMS isn't a bad game for what its trying to do if it was marketed right from the start, its issue was its miss marketing and Sony were the ones publishing the game. 

It could have been easily fixed if Sony just stepped in and said "Shaun, are you actually going to provide these things for this game? If not lets change the tactics" instead they sat in there high chair allowing Hello Games to keep over promising. I wouldn't be solely blaming a small dev team for there inexperience, I would blame the entire team behind the game. Sony should have known better as well as this was also promoting there own hardware.

Imagine if I was buying a car which advertised all these features but when I brought the car is was lacking what was advertised.. Would I just blame the car model and engineers for the lack of features? Or would I take it up to the brand and blame them for misleading there cars? I can tell you ill be going to the brand which this car falls under and argue my complaints. Sony in this case is the main brand of this game since they allowed it under there wings. Every company has Quality Control, this game definitely slipped under the radar. Maybe the hype was too big to control? Who knows, in the end that's not the customers problem.

One last thing before you go, thismeintiel. You accuse me of trying to deflect:

All the while doing some deflection of your own:

This is not the first time you've done something like this, may I remind you?

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8395900

That said, I still invite you to point out where I deflected "blame away from a 1st party dev and their parent company lying about the scope of their game".

Again, we're going more into the semantics of what 'active' means. If you consider Sony giving Hello Games a platform to promote their game, then be my guest. I already conceded your point, in fact. However, if we are to go that route, we need to consider the spectrum of what constitutes 'very active' and 'not very active'. I will ask you again because you did not answer my question, in the PSX video, who was more 'active' in promoting NMS? Sean Murray or Shuhei Yoshida?

Promotion is promotion, but not all promotions are created equal. Considering that Microsoft owns and therefore, is also in charge of Rare's inner workings, it would not be unreasonable to think that Rare's PR is filtered through the higher echelons of Microsoft before it goes out into public. In contrast, since Hello Games is 3rd party, unless stated otherwise, the studio does not have to pass their PR through a 'Sony filter'. If you interpret that as not "seem[ing] all that different", then sure. However, to quote Mark Twain, "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug". The situations are similar, but they are not identical.

I'll take your word for it and agree that Sean was more active. This does not change the fact that Yoshida was there and agreed to do this as well as put in a nice word in for NMS at the end. Also doesn't change the fact that some party at PlayStation edited and uploaded the video to PlayStation's YT channel.

Was there no 'Sony filter' for whatever is shown up on PlayStation's E3 presentations? If there was, it was poor. If there wasn't, it was irresponsible.

Either way, Sony's consent was surely required.

I'm going to give Sony the benefit of the doubt: perhaps they just got careless and allowed a faulty product to go all-out and at full-blast at their E3 conferences and even put Yoshida's face alongside the product. Perhaps their QA fell asleep as they played a couple rounds of NMS before allowing Sean such extensive access to PlayStation resources.

All that said, even as shit was hitting the fan, PlayStation support was hesitant to issue any refunds:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-16-sonys-shuhei-yoshida-on-no-mans-sky

I'd understand a hesitance to issue refunds for digital purchases but one would think an exception could have been made for this ONE case. Apparently not.

Sony was sticking with this product through thick or thin, game-crashing bugs and all and don't bother them about it. Go bug Sean Houdini for a transaction that occurred with PlayStation's combined media resources' blessings and through Sony's own network .

You wanna call this 'active' or 'passive' or 'string cheese' is ultimately irrelevant: Sony banked on this scandal with their full consent and customers got screwed.

You can say that there is a 'Sony filter'. However, I'll quote a part of my past comment: "we need to consider the spectrum of what constitutes 'very active' and 'not very active'". The strictness of the filter was likely less than that of Microsoft due to the fact that Hello Games is a 3rd party developer and therefore, not manned by Sony. In contrast, Microsoft has full autonomy over Rare. There are filters in both cases, but the permeability of the filters are likely not identical.

Perhaps Sony should have had a greater filter considering the platform they were giving NMS but maybe putting on a good show took priority over ensuring a quality product?

I'll have to take your word for it on Sony and refunds. I don't regularly do business with PSN...