3 Reasons Why Sony Won’t Be At E3 2023

Sony gave the shocking news that they won’t be appearing at E3 2023 next year. For the first time in 24 years, Sony and PlayStation will not show off.

This news was conveyed by Sony to Game Informer during the 5th anniversary of the PS4 release.

For those of you who don’t know, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is an annual trade show for the video game industry organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

The program is used by the publishers games to introduce and release upcoming games.

Unlike Gamescom and other events that are open to the public, E3 is an industry-specific event so those wishing to attend are required by the ESA to verify their professional connections.

E3 2023 previously featured lineup quite capable starting from Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Bethesda, Devolver Digital, Square Enix, Ubisoft, PC Gaming Show, Sony, and Nintendo.

Then, how big is the impact of the absence of Sony and PlayStation next year and what are the reasons?

1. Sony is running out of ammo for new game titles (exclusive?)

This is the most plausible reason, Sony really has run out of new game titles to display, especially titles exclusive.

Several games that will be released on PS4 (no exact date yet) include Dragon Star Varnir, Shenmue III, Arc of Alchemist, Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation, Dreams, The Last of Us Part 2, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.

Title exclusive there are Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, Blood & Truth, Concrete Genie, Erica, MediEvil, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, Firewall: Zero Hour, and Death Stranding.

That is, this game is not necessarily playable in 2023, especially the title exclusive. Sony doesn’t want to just come to E3 2023 and then just deliver updates “Here’s a list of games you can play whose dates are unknown.”

This is a problem Sony has always had at E3. For some reason, Sony always can’t give the best PlayStation performances at the E3 event every year.

If you read the full E3 2023 reviews, many agree that Sony didn’t “bite” much in 2023. Let’s look at the facts, at E3 2023, Microsoft presented 50 game titles consisting of 18 exclusive and 15 premieres. Meanwhile, Sony only displays 13 game titles with 4 exclusive.

In terms of quality, games exclusive Sony’s is admittedly superior compared to Microsoft. But not in a marketing way during the appearance at E3.

Sony itself also canceled the PlayStation Experience event in December, which usually featured lineups upcoming games.

“The reasons behind that really are, we don’t have — we have a lot of progress that we’re making in our games, and we’re seeing that coming out, [but] now that we have Spider-Man out the door, we’re looking down into 2023 games like Dreams and Days Gone.” But we wouldn’t have enough to bring people all together in some location in North America to have that event. We don’t want to set really high expectations and then not deliver on it. It was a hard decision. -Shawn Layden as Chairman of Worldwide Studios from Sony Interactive Entertainment

Obviously, Sony doesn’t want to put high expectations on the audience regarding the line-up of games exclusive they themselves do not know when the release date.

2. Sony intends to focus on developing its own events

Besides Sony, a few major publishers also been absent (some even permanently) from E3 events such as EA, Activision Blizzard, and Disney.

If related to the first reason, Sony’s failure at the E3 event seems to be a whip for them to provide the best for their fans in the future and it seems they intend to hold their own event.

It could be that their PlayStation Experience event will be completely overhauled and maximized as a single event so that all the information regarding upcoming games and others only exist in this event.

“Exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2023. As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community. PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate, think differently and experiment with new ways to delight gamers. As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2023. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2023 and can’t wait to share our plans with you.” -ESA to Game Informer

That is, a party to enjoy the title exclusive such as Last of Us Part 2, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, and Days Gone must be postponed in the near future.

3. Sony will make a comeback with “PS5”

Regardless, there’s no doubt that Sony’s PlayStation is platform consoles biggest and most favorite by gamers. It has been proven that in 2023 alone sales have reached more than 80 million units.

And what if Sony wants to discontinue the PS4 in 2023 or 2023 and carry it on to the next generation? Stopping here means that Sony wants to introduce a new PlayStation family, namely PS5.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida himself said “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware”. Sony is really working on a PS4 successor.

Sony itself has just patented the latest technology which reportedly is a feature backward compatibility to support playing PS1-PS4 games on PS5. A feature that was forgotten on PS4 and already exists on its competitor, Xbox One.

I’m sure, Sony really will do comeback with a PS5 that can play titles exclusive such as Last of Us Part 2, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, and Days Gone with definite release dates.

Those are some of the reasons why Sony won’t be present at the upcoming E3 2023 event. What do you think?