Sony’s Shawn Layden has explained why the games publisher is skipping E3 2019.
In November 2018, Sony announced it wouldn’t attend E3 2019. Now, Layden has detailed why, beginning with his belief that E3 is too late in the year to work with retailers in order to plan for the holiday season.
“We have an event in February called Destination PlayStation, where we bring all retailers and third-party partners to come hear the story for the year,” Layden told CNET. “They’re making purchasing discussions in February. June, now, is just too late to have a Christmas holiday discussion with retailers.”
Moreover, Layden said E3 isn’t as helpful for media outlets as it used to be.
“So retail has really dropped off. And journalists now, with the internet and the fact that 24/7 there is game news, it’s lost its impact around that,” Layden continued. “So the trade show became a trade show without a lot of trade activity. The world has changed, but E3 hasn’t necessarily changed with it. And with our decision to do fewer games, bigger games, over longer periods of time, we got to a point where June of 2019 was not a time for us to have a new thing to say. And we feel like if we ring the bell and people show up here in force, people have expectations ‘Oh, they’re going to tell us something.’”
E3 2019 takes place in June in Los Angeles, California.
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