Rumours that Sony will be switching to a more considered game release schedule in a bid to prioritise quality over quantity are true, it turns out, and will affect both the PlayStation 4 and 5.

Chatting to CNET, Shawn Layden, the head of Sony's video game-making wing SIE Worldwide Studios, was explaining why the company had decided to sack off E3 this year, which it turns out isn't anything to do with an incoming PS5 announcement and everything to do with being sick of it.

"Retail has really dropped off," Layden said. "And journalists now, with the internet and the fact that 24/7 there is game news, it's lost its impact around that... so the trade show became a trade show without a lot of trade activity. The world has changed, but E3 hasn't necessarily changed with it."

He went on: "With our decision to do fewer games - bigger games - over longer periods of time, we got to a point where June of 2019 was not a time for us to have a new thing to say."

This change of tack might stem in part from how much of a kicking PlayStation took from gamers for Fallout 76 and Battlefield 5, which enraged some for reasons both valid (Fallout was a bit tedious; Battlefield wasn't quite finished) and depressingly predictable (Battlefield had the gall to feature a woman in its promo material).