The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t slowed down by a long shot. For the past 2 years, the pandemic has really impacted many video gaming events, including the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or as its known as E3. E3 2020 was even cancelled, and E3 2021 ended up being a digital-only event after being absent for a year. As of today, there has been a update on if E3 will be a thing this year.
The ESA has issued a statement, saying that:
“Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in 2022. We remain incredibly excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”
As for a digital-event, they told VentureBeat that they are “excited about the possibilities of an online event,” but they did not say that one is happening.
Welp, once again Sony is going to be skipping out on E3 for 2020. There are numerous of reasons as to why Sony has been absent for E3 for the past two years in a row. Here’s going to be a breakdown as to why Sony may not want to be involved with E3 anymore and not just these past two shows.
Here’s a good reason as many bought up from Twitter and even other gaming forums, E3 as a whole from influence and cultural relevance has been slowly evaporating. From last year there’s only been 60,000 people that was in attendance last year. This is a bit of a troubling number even when you compare it to other gaming events and conventions who will pull out hundred thousands of people from all of the country or the world. Conventions such as PAX, GamesCom, TooManyGames, are starting to take over and fill in the gaps in between the year and not just for one part of the whole year.
Don’t E3 can still be an exciting show and event to go to. Though without Sony, it does feel like a BIG gap is missing in between the other two big dogs being Nintendo and Microsoft. Another thing as to why Sony has been skipping E3 may be the cost to put on a show. It’s probably expensive to hold and host a part on the show floor.
So, I do think money could be a factor, but not the MAIN factor. Sony does have other ways they could be able to show off their own stuff and their own announcements. Probably the biggest thing they have for this is their State of Plays. As of now, it’s not currently as popular as the Nintendo Directs has gotten over the past couple of years, but whose to say it won’t get to Nintendo Directs levels of popularity.
If given the time and patience this could be Sony’s new way of giving out announcements. If Sony’s State of Plays ends up getting bigger for them, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this is how they do their E3 formats like how Nintendo has been doing their E3’s through Nintendo Direct presentations and pre-record them and send it to E3 to be streamed.
Honestly, the news of Sony skipping E3 again, doesn’t surprise me! Another reason is that they could just not be ready to show much of anything for the upcoming PS5. Even if that were also the case, Sony doesn’t really need E3. It’s really E3 that needs Sony. Again, the attendance level from the past two years haven’t been that great from what been said by press who actually do go to that event. It almost feels somewhat empty. While it’s probably easier to manuever around for press, that does sound a bit not worth to attend. Sony may also be feeling, is it worth it to go to an event, where’s there not many eyeballs watching as their once use to be.
As of these days it feels like E3 doesn’t feel like much of a big thing anymore. Every time the summer rolls around, for gamers it’s like an early Christmas because of E3 and to see what companies have in store for not just the rest of the year, but also for the holiday season as well.
So, in a way it kind of sad to see how much E3 has somewhat fallen, but with Sony not going again, isn’t much of a big deal for them. It’s more of a big for E3 and the event itself. With the hype around PS5, who knows maybe after the reveal this could be Sony’s return to E3 and this is just them waiting for PS5 to be revealed, known, and released to the general public and we could end up seeing them back again at E3 2021.
As far as what I think reasons for Sony has been for not possibly attending goes to three things: money for hosting a booth and room for press, E3 almost not being relevant, having their own event to showcase news (i.e. State of Play), and they could just not have much to show. Well, I guess that’s technically four things, but whatever.
Who knows what this could mean for E3 going forward. Not to mention Microsoft has already put their confirmation of attending this years show almost shortly after Sony dropped out. So, there goes monkey-see-and-monkey actually not do. As far Nintendo we don’t know their status as of yet, and we probably won’t know until maybe April or May of this year if I had to guess on a confirmation of Nintendo’s status for E3.
What do you guys think about Sony dropping from E3? Do you guys think Sony needs it or don’t? What do you think Sony’s reasonings are for not going to E3 2020. Please, let me know in the comments.
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