So, Sony isn't going to be at E3 2019. No press conference, no presence at the show. It's surprising news that's rocked the gaming world, but as our own Sammy Barker has said, it's a move that's impossible to judge right now. There's little doubt that Sony is currently very busy behind the scenes prepping the PS5, but what does all of this mean for E3?
The Electronic Entertainment Expo has hosted Sony and PlayStation for a staggering 24 years up until this point, but that impressive run will obviously come to an end next year. With no PlayStation presence at the event, you can guarantee a big showing from director competitor Microsoft, but is E3 really as important as hardcore internet circles make it out to be? That's the question that we're going to be asking you today.
There's no denying that E3 has been gaming's biggest stage for some time, but in an age where information is instant and every publisher has the ability to showcase their products however and whenever they like, it's not difficult to argue that E3 is an old fashioned concept. Is E3 becoming less and less relevant, especially now that Sony has dropped it?
Of course, Sony isn't the first company to have changed its approach to E3. Years ago now, Nintendo decided to no longer host traditional E3 press conferences, and so the Nintendo Direct was born -- pre-recorded streams that are designed to give fans a look at future games whenever the Big N feels like it. It's an effective way to communicate with fans -- there's no middle man, and there's no need to compete with other publishers.
Sony could be thinking along those same lines, or perhaps it just doesn't think that it has the content to pull off a satisfying E3 show. And let's not forget the company's borderline disastrous E3 conference earlier this year -- maybe it's come to the conclusion that E3 just isn't worth the effort.
But let's be real: Sony doesn't need E3 -- E3 needs Sony. There's no official rule that demands publishers attend E3 -- at this point it's just a tradition, and an opportunity to get your message across to a sizable audience. So again, we ask: is E3 still relevant? Let us know what you think in our polls, and then give us an honest opinion in the comments section below.
Is E3 still relevant? (215 votes)
- Of course, it's still gaming's biggest stage
- Yes, it's still an important part of the industry
- Yeah, but it's becoming less relevant over time
- Kind of, but Sony's departure is the beginning of the end for E3 as we know it
- Nope, Sony's departure has killed E3
- Nah, E3 hasn't been relevant for a while
- No, E3 is totally irrelevant0%
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Are you disappointed that Sony won't be attending E3 2019? (206 votes)
- Yes, E3 is basically pointless without Sony
- Yeah, E3 just isn't the same without Sony
- Yep, but I'm still looking forward to E3
- Nah, I don't really care if Sony's there or not
- Nope, I think E3 will be better without Sony
- No, I don't care about E3 either way
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Now that Sony won't be at E3, what do you most want to see from the company in 2019? (198 votes)
- I'd like to see Sony host its own E3-style event
- I hope Sony hosts its own smaller events throughout the year
- I would like to see Sony try the Nintendo Direct approach
- A huge PS5 reveal event, and nothing more
- Nothing, I want Sony to go silent and keep us all guessing
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Do you think we'll ever see Sony at E3 again? (200 votes)
- Yes, I'm sure Sony will be back in 2020
- Yeah, I think we'll see Sony return to E3 at some point
- I'm honestly not sure
- Nope, I think Sony's done with E3
- No, I think this is the death of E3 as we know it
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Comments 44
Wow...I thought that was just a rumour about Sony.
I thought Nintendo Directs came before they dropped E3 shows.
Either way, given the past few shows i general from Sony have been....well...lets say repetitive....let them skip it.
I think they'll be back to E3 soon enough. Though E3 overall isn't as relevant anymore I would say, since like the article says, you can reveal anything anytime you want nowadays.
Are we sure they're never going to E3 again or have they only said they won't be there for 2019?
e3 won't be the same without sony for sure.
but they will be back after they have revealed the ps5 and sony e3 2020 could be killer with launch games and whatnot.
E3 is still relevant, but it's waning and has been for years. Like you say in the article, companies can reach fans, the press, whoever they need on their own, in their own time now. I must admit I did used to think that PSX would leapfrog E3 in Sony's eyes, but I never, ever expected them to pull out of E3 entirely.
I think there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation here. In terms of traffic on the site, E3 is comfortably one of our biggest periods. But does that traffic come for E3 or because Sony's at E3? I'd argue it's the latter.
E3 is pointless without sony, I'm not interested in xbox and nintendo already had direct for their biggest announcement. I think sony will make their own show (psx) to become more important, like apple that have their own event.
I think if they can set up a sort of direct (live) with some limited time demo games, they will achieve much more.
My point is they have to recreate the same E3 event /experience with demo and presentations but in your own living room.
In addition, if they are confident with PSNow I think they can even set up some demos via PSNow or give the choice to the uses: Download Demo / Stream Demo.
thing is these days,any respected and well liked dev could put out a reveal trailer on their youtube channel or twitter account and the fans and websites would go crazy with said reveal.
and while the reveal may get more attention if they did so at e3,i think the difference between the amount of attention gained at e3 over their own reveal at their own time would be rather small.
e3 used to be important for devs as a tool to reach out to fans and get more interest in their projects,but with the growth of the internet and youtube,social media etc that role has been reversed.
now it is e3 that needs the big devs and publishers to be there to attract people to the show,instead of e3 attracting people to the devs and publishers.
They'll be no scrumptious new Sony exclusives shown off at the event next year but there'll still be plenty of games to look forward to. They'll probably be back with a bang in 2020 to announce the PS5.
I'm just looking forward to seeing more of Cyberpunk 2077 anyway.
E3 is pretty irrelevant now cos Sony's conferences were always the highlight. But I prefer it if Sony did their own thing instead of having to share airtime with the competition.
@get2sammyb To be fair, you'll still have all the third-parties revealing their games for Playstation but it really isn't the same without the possibility of a Bloodborne-esque reveal or Spider-Man 2.
I'm not sure whether they'll be back, y'know. Part of me thinks they will, but the other part of me thinks it's over.
Well at least people might pay attention to what Microsoft have to say about the XBox for a change...
Im sure whatever Sony have up their sleeve will be interesting either way
E3 is where mainstream media covers gaming, so yes it’s still relevant.
The question is does Sony have anything that hasn’t been revealed for 2019? Because it’s not just E3 they’ve exited from in the next 12 months, but their own event.
"Kind of, but Sony's departure is the beginning of the end for E3 as we know it" That rings true.
Especially with the E3 opening to public in recent years, I think the conference is in the transition to becoming more of a public event than an insiders event.
It's been a drastic switch for Sony. One year they're doing E3, TGS, The Paris Game Show, Gamescom, and PSX (with a little The Games Awards sprinkled in), and now this. But I get it. Sony has delivered on its games. Infamous, Until Dawn, Detroit, God of War, Horizon, Spider-Man, Gran Turismo, Ni no Kuni, Nioh, Bloodborne, Yakuza, Persona...they brought the games that the others didn't. And we know what's coming, which is a stronger line-up than the others as well...The Last of Us 2, Death Stranding, Dreams, Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima.
It's been a great generation for Sony.
@MrGawain But will mainstream media keep visiting if Nintendo's most important announcements are nothing more than a video on Youtube, and Sony has their own event.
The mainstream media isn't covering E3 because of EA, Ubisoft or PC gaming.
I'm just fascinated by what this decision means for Sony. I can't wait to find out what they're up to. As far as E3 goes, there will still be plenty to see, but Sony's been a tentpole presence at the show for its lifetime. For it to stop attending is a big deal, and it's going to affect the whole event in some capacity.
@get2sammyb i have a hard time believing that they won't attend e3 if it involves the ps5 though.
their last hoorah at e3 could very well be the ps5 reveal just because the ps4 reveal at e3 gained them so much good press and an influx of buyers. (partly because of microsoft poor event but still) and i think they would want to have a repeat of that despite their own non e3 event being able to do the same thing. (maybe just to 1up xbox)
i still maintain that E3 wasn't any good for Sony, it's an event aimed at the western market yet they always get the crappy time slot where it's either way too early in the morning (UK) or too late at night (U.S) plus as XBOX always gets the best slot (shocker, the American company gets best time at the American event) it means most publishers will use them to break their news (look at Devil May Cry 5, Kingdom Hearts and even anime based games like Jump Force and World Seeker last year, things you would normally associate with PlayStation) so all Sony has to fall back on are their exclusives which normally are enough but if the rumours about the PS5 are true they probably don't have anything new to show at the next E3
Sony would be better off doing their own little event right before E3, and announce the PS5, that would kill off any hype people might have for E3
On the plus side, at least I won't have to sit up until stupid o'clock to watch their conference.
@get2sammyb no it's not over dog.the reason why they not going to be at e3 it's because they don't have nothing to show.they will be back in 2020.they are the best playa.just like my pittsburgh Steelers.word up son
It's a bit hard to say that the loss of one company means the death of a whole event, but it does kinda say something when they back out of it.
Personally I enjoy E3 enough, but it does lose it's relevancy as time goes on. Lots of companies hard their own events, and they're more likely to give attention to those first and foremost rather than E3.
If MS plays there cards right, then Sony will need to come back to E3. If they have anything good in the pipeline, they’ll get a lot of excitement.
I won’t be tuning into E3 next year & I’ll catch the third party news here.
So yeah, less relevant to me, but it’s still a big gaming event.
It's still the biggest event in the industry, and I'll still watch the Xbox and Nintendo segments, so nothing is really changing for me.
I'm never able to catch the Sony conference live from beginning to end anyway.
The next E3 will be awful without Sony, I hope their absence is just temporary.
Well E3 is pointless for me without Sony as I only game on the PS (other than Solitare on the laptop). I have no interest in what is on the other consoles. I have no yet bothered with a company's address.
I will be interested to see the third party games. Cyberpunk, etc.
Of course they’ll be presented with a bit of Xbox bias now, but ... whatever. I’m fine with that. I’ll just filter out the all that ugly green color in my head.
The purpose of E3 is now pretty much redundant and has been for a while. Its purpose was as a 'trade show' for devs to pitch ideas and sell their games to journo's who in turn would be selling those games to us via the physical media (gaming magazines). It was a way for publishers to get the word out to gamers (via the press who attended E3) what new games, hardware etc that they had coming up and now with the internet, they have no need of the 'middle-men' (journalists) to spread the word.
Publishers and Devs can now speak directly to gamers, able to give exactly the information they want, when they want and control what we see too. We aren't relying on a Photograph of a screen to get an idea of the way a game looks, aren't relying on a journalists description of the game-play or them not giving enough information because they don't have the column inches with all the other news they want to focus on. We can get actual game-play streamed straight to our devices, the developers, publishers, hardware manufacturers talking directly to us even interacting with us (as a community) with live stream Q&A's - Anthem had a 45min live stream just focussed on the cosmetic customisation with a Q&A which may end up with features the devs hadn't considered now being in the game at launch - that is so much better than some small photograph of a screen in a magazines with a few 100 words to try and tell us what a game is and offers.
E3 is now more an institution, an annual event that kickstarts the gaming run in to the holiday season and is perhaps more important for that reason than its original purpose. Its the event that starts the hype and excitement for the holiday season which is the normally busiest period of the gaming calendar and as an institution, it still has a place on the calendar - but does need to change to reflect that - maybe become more like a US based Gamescom - a place for the public to get hands on, get to speak to devs in person etc rather than be a press focussed trade show event.
E3 is still covering multi-platform games, which represents 70% of the games I buy. So 'yes', it is still worthwhile if you want to see some gameplay, regardless of platform.
I can see Sony having its own events, pushing the exclusives even more than before. With PC gaming dominating the media, professional or otherwise, I think it's better for Sony to do its own thing. Otherwise I feel they just get overshadowed by everything PC, PC, and more PC, ... as far as journalistic coverage goes.
In fact, I feel it would be better if all console systems focused more on having separate events. Console gaming does not get as much coverage in the media as PC gaming, especially with big events like E3.
@get2sammyb
Psx might just become Sony E3. Whats the point of two events in the US? They had a few years to experiment (and didn't they) and prove the impact of it at the end of the year.
I don’t get how a few days ago E3 was “on the decline, but still the biggest gaming event of the year”, and today it seems it cannot exist without Sony.
I mean, even Sammy himself admitted Sony’s show was disappointing this year, and yet now you all act like E3 was never important?
I’d like to know how many people here mocked Nintendo for its Direct approach to E3, and now are pretending E3 is worthless without Sony.
It’s plain ridiculous: no company (nor lack thereof) can single-handedly render E3 useless, not even your favorite one.
@clvr Fanboys gonna fanboy.
Sony should go the Direct route as well. Unless people are excited about watching attendees awkwardly shuffle from room to room to pad time.
It's disappointing that Sony won't be there, but I still think E3 is relevant and I'm still looking forward to what the other companies have to announce there.
If Sony doesn't want to reveal the PS5 by the end of the next E3, then Sony probably doesn't have enough new material to reveal for next year's show. I fully expect them to be back in 2020.
in terms of size, E3 is absolutely dwarfed by gamescom - it has 5 times the number of attendees.. with so many of those types of events.. E3, gamescom, tokyo games show, paris games week, psx.. as soon as one is over, it's all speculation about what wasn't shown and if it'll be at the next one. i'd be surprised if a number of publishers aren't questioning what they're really getting out of E3, especially when these days it seems so much stuff gets leaked beforehand and control of the information is lost.
E3 2018 was uniformly bad. EA's E3 "but not at E3" days of play thing was pretty awful, and they'd already had a special battlefield v reveal event weeks before. ubisoft's conference was as embarrassingly cringeworthy as ever (even when they do have new stuff). wtf did microsoft show? a glorified youtube trailers playlist?. sony faffed about with some "be a part of the game" theatrical piece that fell on its ar*e. activision didn't bother. rockstar didn't bother. bethesda does its own thing. every site publishes about a million articles on E3, that one bit of news is swallowed about 10 minutes later by something else. to be honest, i can't really remember a single memorial new game announcement from this year's E3 (though that might just be me going senile). too much noise and not enough focus imo. plus there's a lot of pressure on studios to get stuff ready to be shown for that fixed date in june. maybe sony's feeling the same.. it doesn't need to show more of TLoU2, death stranding and ghost of tsushima.
other publishers could follow suit and E3 will lose its glamour as the event of big announcements, and they begin to control their own announcements. it could spectacular backfire for sony, and it returns tail between its legs.. alternatively, the other manufacturers sensing blood could blow their load at E3, then get sucker punched by sony later on.
The amount of leaks and reveals before E3 the last couple of years have made a mockery of the show.
I think this could be the beginning of the end for E3 as we know it.
I still think they will be back next year
But for me E3 hasn't meant much in a long while. We get bombarded with hundreds of games during the three days, that by the end of it the majority of us have forgotten 85% of them.Then take into account (especially this year) that most of the announcements get leaked before the actual conferences.
I feel like both Sony and Microsoft should just do their own events throughout the year catered towards their own games/fans/software showing longer looks of games etc
theyll be back in 2020, they just doing it this year for huge ps5 psx
As JohnnyShoulder states above, the sheer number of "leaks" (deliberate or accidental) in the weeks/days leading up to E3 sort of ruins it a fair bit these days anyway, as now there are usually only one or two genuine surprises revealed from the actual show.
Having said that, I do still like E3 (and the other trade shows) and would be disappointed if this does eventually lead to its demise or irrelevance etc.
Personally, I just think Sony are taking a hiatus this year as they have nothing big/new to announce right now that hasn't been seen many times before already. E3 probably falls too early in the year for PS5 / PSVR 2 announcements and most of their 1st party teams are either still working on their next game or have only recently released a game this year, so think only Guerrilla Games would currently be in a position to reveal/show off something new (although whether they are working on a PS4 or PS5 game who knows).
Pretty sure the lacklustre Sony show last year, which was criticised despite them trying to do something a little bit different, probably had a major influence in this decision also.
Still think E3 will be worth watching though (providing other developers don't now follow Sony's lead and start to drop out). Hopefully, it also means that Microsoft and Phil Spencer will really up their game this time round and show/announce some good new exclusives rather than just relying on 3rd party trailers and "world's most powerful console" to see them through like this year's show.
Interesting times indeed, but no need to panic or set alarm bells ringing just yet methinks !
E3 don't need sony
Losing E3 isn't the worst thing to happen to Los Angeles, the Chargers play there too.
E3 started going downhill the moment they started allowing the general public through the doors, IMO. Sony leaving isn't the end of the show of course, but for me the appeal is certainly lessened. From my point of view the concern isn't "what will E3 be like without Sony" so much as "so...when are we going to have exciting news from Sony, and in what format?"
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