E3 2020 Promises To 'Shake Things Up'

There's no denying that E3 — the Electronic Entertainment Expo — has been on a decline these past few years. Its trade show focus has faded out and left the event feeling more like a fan convention. And though some companies still take part, they've largely moved their operations off the show floor.

This year, E3 wants to change up the formula a bit. But will it be enough to make the stakeholders who keep it alive happy?

"You'll be happy to know that we're not producing E3 2020 in a vacuum," the ESA said in a blog post today. "For E3 2020, we're collaborating with industry insiders and new creative partners, including the tastemakers at iam8bit, to reinvigorate the show and, frankly, to shake things up."

As for how E3 plans to "shake things up," as the ESA puts it... well, the organization was incredibly vague about the details.

"We will be showcasing E3 to the world through new streaming and digital programming while creating gatherings on the show floor that let people do what they love the most... play and celebrate games," it said.

Plans leaked months ago made E3 2020 sound like a total nightmare, so we hope the show doesn't resemble that mess. Still, it's a little too late to bring one big player back into the fold. Change as it may, E3 won't be able to rope Sony and the PlayStation brand into taking part. Sony will be skipping the show for the second year in a row.

It was somewhat shocking to hear that PlayStation wouldn't be joining the festivities at E3 2020. Though Sony opted not to attend the event last year, many chalked the company's absence up to timing. Sony wouldn't have any new games to show, and E3 2019 took place about a year and a half before the presumed start of the next generation.

Now it's looking like PlayStation might be done with E3 altogether.

Sony's announcement this year more or less said that it didn't agree with E3's direction, and that the company would instead take its messaging straight to the fans. We got a taste of that already in the "State of Play" streams that debuted last year. But Sony will likely want a bigger stage when it comes time to officially unveil the PlayStation 5. And since it's not coming to E3, we can assume the company will be holding some sort of event by itself.

Should Sony's own event prove successful, would it really have any incentive to return to E3 at all? Probably not.

Perhaps we'll get a surprise next year in the form of a huge PlayStation press conference at E3 2021. Maybe Sony will decide it can't keep ceding all that attention to Microsoft and Nintendo. At this point in time, though, that's looking increasingly doubtful.