Sony is skipping E3 2020, marking the second year it will be miss the conference. But this year's absence has major implications Microsoft, Xbox, and the other major gaming brands that regularly present at E3, since it means Sony's big PlayStation 5 reveal will occur elsewhere.
Sony confirmed its E3 2020 absence last week, saying E3's "vision" did not line up with the company's focus this year. Instead, Sony will attempt to make fans feel like "part of the PlayStation family" by participating in hundreds of consumer events, giving fans hands-on access to PlayStation content. E3 was traditionally seen as a conference for the media, meant to give publications information to disseminate to fans. But E3's organizer, the Entertainment Software Association, opened the event to the public in 2017, and an E3 2020 ESA pitch document revealed this year's event could further shift its focus to fans and influencers rather than traditional media.
Sony leaving in spite of E3's changes - which appear to align with Sony's goals - seems to indicate the company simply doesn't think it needs E3 anymore. Sony was the third most popular publisher at E3 2019, after all, proving it didn't even need to be there to make an impression. This approach arguably rings of the arrogance of Sony's PS3 launch, when the company infamously overestimated the PlayStation brand's power after the success of the PS2. With PlayStation 4 sales faster than the PS2 and Wii, it's possible Sony is feeling a similar level of confidence.
Regardless of Sony's reasons for bailing, E3 is forced to accept a tough reality: In the eyes of the best-selling console brand of all time, the biggest gaming event of the year is no longer relevant. This leaves Nintendo and especially Microsoft in an awkward situation. Nintendo has long held its own Nintendo Direct press releases outside of industry-accepted game conferences, meaning it already has an infrastructure in place if E3 goes down, and Sony has experimented with events like PlayStation Experience and its State of Play broadcasts. Other game companies are beginning to follow suit, pivoting to live-streamed content like EA's Play 2019 event. Microsoft has its ID@Xbox indie showcase and Inside Xbox streams, but E3 has so far remained Microsoft's main event of the year.
E3 has been slowly dying as these companies shift to streaming announcements directly to fans, but Sony's second absence is the nail in the coffin. If the company continues to forgo the conference, Microsoft could attempt to frame its continued attendance as an effort to stick around "for all the real gamers out there," but it will begin to look as if it's simply clinging to an irrelevant relic of gaming's past. This has the potential to impact both the Xbox Series X brand's image as a cutting-edge gaming console and, subsequently, Xbox's sales.
It remains to be seen whether Sony's non-E3 console reveal can capture the same amount of hype as Microsoft's, but even Sony's disappointing CES PlayStation reveal resulted in wild success, with the lame PS5 logo becoming Instagram's most popular game company post. As it stands, all signs point to E3's approaching end.
The PlayStation 5 is set to launch in the 2020 holiday season.