The news just dropped minutes ago that Sony would not be attending next year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo event (or E3 2018 for short), following in the footsteps of Electronic Arts and Microsoft (sort of) and leaving a big question of what it has planned for the forthcoming year.
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While it hasn’t made an official announcement, Sony did provide some details as to why it’s moving on from the yearly event, where it won’t have any kind of presence — not even its annual press conference.
Speaking with Game Informer, the company officially noted, “As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community. PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate, think differently and experiment with new ways to delight gamers.
“As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can’t wait to share our plans with you.”
The company had been in question about its future plans when it opted to not host a PlayStation Experience event for this year, as it’s done in the past.
As for whether the company might bring the Experience event back to host on its own terms (as EA has done with EA Play over the years), PlayStation senior vice president of communications Jennifer Clark noted, “We will not activate or hold a press conference around E3.” (However, keep in mind that the company could always do something the week before or after, depending on timing.)
“We are looking at events as a whole and how we can speak more to our fans and continue to wow them. The timing of PSX and E3 didn’t allow for that,” Clark added. “But lots of exciting things to come, and we hope to share shortly. Some of our biggest games will have key milestones next year so we will work hard to blow those up.”
We’re not sure what Sony will be doing next. But for now, the community is certainly rocked by this news. It’ll be interesting to see what the next move is for all parties involved.
(Big thanks to Game Informer for the details!)