No Sony at E3 2019
Yes you read the title right, one of the major key companies that participate in E3 every year since it started 23 years ago will NOT be in attendance in 2019. SONY has decided to pull out of the next E3 conference, which was a shock to me personally and probably was a major hit to all the super SONY fans out there. Below is the official statement from SONY themselves:
“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.”
SONY is not the first company to do this, as EA has been doing this for the past couple of years with their conference being done outside of the Los Angeles Convention Center where the E3 conference is held. Also, last year Microsoft held most of their presentations at the nearby LA Live Theatre. For SONY’s conference at E3 last year with the theatrical experience they had in a church setting, they only showed off gameplay of four games that weren’t new at all and that we knew were definitely coming, those games being Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding. All those games besides Spider-Man did not have a official release date and I can bet that that is the big reason why they decided to skip this year. With E3 being the mecca, the main stage, the catalina wine mixer (“Step Brothers” reference) of the gaming community, this is the stage where you show what is coming from your company to the media and consumers alike. SONY is still working on the same games which is why they don’t have official release dates yet, so this is the best decision they can do so they won’t be the odd duck at the annual conference that is E3. It is also expected that Sony will soon announce their successor to the PlayStation 4 with a quote from SONY CEO Kenichiro Yoshida stating, “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware.” With the PS4 being 5 years old I can see that announcement coming sooner than later.
When I had a conversation with fellow squad member LeeRoyJUSTICE aka CorneredFOX, he thought this was a good decision for them just because of points made above about them having nothing to show and to just work on the games they showed off last year. Also, after doing some more reading on this topic, SONY's competitor XBox managed to throw a light jab at them in a tweet from the official XBox account. The tweet can be seen below.
How do you all feel about this announcement? Do you think it is a good move for SONY? Let us know in the comments below. Until next time y’all, PEACE!