E3 2019 Shawn Layden

Sony has been tight-lipped about its future plans for quite some time now, with one of its last major announcements being its withdrawal from Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019. The company has been a big presence at the show since the beginning, but this year, it won't be in attendance. Why? Well, PlayStation bigwig Shawn Layden has kind of explained the Japanese giant's stance on E3 already, but in a new interview with CNET, the executive goes into a little more detail.

In quite a lengthy answer to the publication's question regarding E3, Layden explains the trade show used to be for trade; retailers and journalists would flock to Los Angeles to learn about new games on the horizon for their respective fields. Nowadays, Sony has its own February trade show called Destination PlayStation, informing retailers of the platform holder's plans for the year. As for games media, the internet has lessened the impact of reporting from E3. In other words: "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."

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Another point Layden makes is that Sony simply doesn't want to falsely build expectations when it's focusing more and more on fewer, higher quality games. "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 expectation 'Oh, they're going to tell us something.'"

We suppose all that makes sense. We're still hoping it'll have some kind of plan for a consumer-facing presentation later in the year, but what form that takes, or even if we get any communication at all, remains to be seen.

[source cnet.com]