Sony will not be at E3 2019. This surprising news was confirmed today from a press release sent out by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the group that organizes and runs E3 each year.

This means that Sony will not have a traditional pre-show conference. This also means that Sony will not have a booth at E3 2019. Sony is the latest of the "Big 3" to ditch the annual conference. Out of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft only the last one remains. Nintendo gave up on the traditional E3 shows some years back, instead opting for their pre-recorded Nintendo Direct and Nintendo Treehouse videos.

EA also put a far lesser emphasis in recent years. The publisher has had a separate E3 adjacent event in Hollywood. Microsoft had their own event at a theater near E3 ahead of E3 2018. It's perhaps only a matter of time before they join the others in just doing their own thing entirely.

According to some reports, the decision to ditch E3 2019 is perhaps in Sony's best interests. As it stands, the conference that Sony would have shown would focus on most of the games it showed off already in 2018. These games include Death Stranding, The Last of Us 2, and Ghost of Tsushima. None of these games have release dates, but all three are expected to be released by the end of 2019.

There is also an interesting rumor circulating that Sony is gearing up for the PlayStation 5 launch in 2020. Sony opting to skip E3 2019 is only serving to fuel those fires.