It’s safe to say that the E3 convention is one of the biggest video game conferences in the world. The long running annual event is normally held in June and traditionally, it’s been the place to be for the biggest, most significant announcements from Microsoft and Sony in regards to its gaming consoles. In recent years however, the significance of E3 has been on the decline and it looks like that slide isn’t going to be stopping this year.
Sony, who skipped out on the conference for the first time in its 24 year history last year, has just announced that it’ll be skipping out on E3 again this year.
“After thorough evaluation, SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020. We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year.”
“We will build upon our global events strategy in 2020 by participating in hundreds of consumer events across the globe. Our focus is on making sure fans feel part of the PlayStation family and have access to play their favorite content. We have a fantastic line up of titles coming to PlayStation 4, and with the upcoming launch of PlayStation 5, we are truly looking forward to a year of celebration with our fans.”
Sony Interactive Entertainment spokesperson
We know the PlayStation 5 will have PS4 backwards compatibility and ship with a solid state drive, as well as support 8K graphics and ray tracing. We also know that it’s pencilled in for a holiday season release, but any other news about the console has been hard to come by, with the only real PS5 news coming out of CES being the PS5 logo reveal, which was underwhelming at best.
It’s looking increasingly likely that Sony is going to be playing out this tease for as long as it can in the run up to the holiday season, and it will seemingly start with the “Experience PlayStation” event that’s set to begin today in New York City and run until the 16th of February.
Going back to E3, Sony’s snub for the second year in a row well and truly signifies the end of an era. The PlayStation brand has been a part of E3 since the very first edition back in 1995, with Sony showcasing the original PlayStation, as well as the consoles price and release date. While E3 remains as one of the most important events in the calendar for game industry, how it maintains its relevance in an time where companies can just livestream their own events remains to be seen.
