Also, the current tense of protecting employees now that everyone can get the vaccine, is pretty weak for an excuse.
Yuzo Koshiro said the other day that he's still waiting to get his vaccine. If they are doing it in Japan by age as in many other countries where the state pays the vaccine, he must be way older than anyone at Tango. So it's pretty likely that none of the Tango employees are still vaccined.
I cannot say your suspicions are wrong, but I tend to doubt that Sony had reason to include any clauses about not delaying games when the deal was done. Back then the dev / pub probably had the same incentive as Sony to launch, possibly more incentive.
At least when a publisher signs with a dev, they don't pay them the full budget of the game at the start. They payments are fractioned and done if they reach certain milestones in time. They often have pretty abusive clauses where they have right to kick out the dev out of the project and move it to another studio if not reaching the quality or not delivering on time.
So I think that the big exclusivity deals may not reach this level but should be somewhat similar: maybe the payments are split into milestones and if they don't reach some of them on time Sony don't pay them. Big exclusives have an important role in their console line-up and marketing & PR strategy and are pretty expensive for them, so they must have something to keep their ass safe.
Have they ever shown gameplay off? Or just that one trailer with the eccentric lady on stage that everyone fell in love with
lol
Yes, I think they released one or two gameplay videos more after the announcement. Btw, the lady left the company while ago.