Regardless of what you may have thought of the show this year, and some people definitely were not fans, E3 2019 wasn’t quite the same without Sony there. Regardless of what they would have had to show, or not had to show for that matter, when one of the industry’s platform holders (and the current leader of the market) skips out, there’s a hole there. Someone who feels the same? Xbox Division Head Phil Spencer.
In an E3 livestream from Giant Bomb (of which you can see the full 6 hour replay here), Spencer showed up and admitted that he felt the conference as a whole suffered without Sony, saying, “E3 is not as good when they’re not here.”
Even though it’s a very simple statement to make, it’s still interesting to note since such pleasant acknowledgement of the main competition is not something we would have seen even a few years ago. But he’s not wrong, the less companies, big or small, that go to E3 the more it suffers. Overall, with the move to digital events such as the Nintendo Direct, EA Play livestreams, and Sony’s State of Play, conferences like these could potentially suffer in the future as more and more companies chose that route.