Unlikely-- E3 (like the other big trade shows in general) has been getting progressively less relevant industry-wide each year, in favor of more direct-to-consumer messaging (like Nintendo's Nintendo Direct presentations). Sony even announced they weren't participating back in January, before all this COVID-19 mess.

This is true. Big companies were the first to pull out of GDC as well. I think the big players feel they have to spend a lot to keep up and they don't get a lot out of it.

I believe the smaller companies are the ones that tend to benefit from the big conferences, because it gives them a chance to talk to people all over the world who might not otherwise be available. Speaking for myself, these cancellations are understandable, but a big problem for my work.

I've heard it was more important, at GDC at least, for indies because you have legendary devs walking around who can help small teams get deals or contacts with bigger networks. Make a demo that catches the eye of the right person and it can be really helpful.

Exactly-- you meet new teams you may want to do business with. Devs meet people who want to invest. Not exactly helpful for EA or Activision, but big help to others.

Sony skipped last E3 and also this one. They did not like the new direction the event was supposedly taking. Geoff Keighley also decided to not do his E3 Coliseum show that he used to host for multiple years.

Personal opinion, I don't think the potential consumer purchasers of the next-generation xbox or PS5 are going to be swayed one way or the other by anything that comes out of E3. Or even whether E3 exists or not.

Assuming both intend to ship for sales Christmas 2020, towards september/october of this year we're going to see a heavy marketing push with video trailers for the games they will launch with. Very similar to how Halo 3 was promoted with the launch of the Xbox 360.

Many publishers were already doing their own thing around E3, both in time and location. Sony was not even participating in E3 2020. It is far far less important than it used to be for the industry

E3 2019 might have well been the last one.

I think supply chain disruptions for manufacturing the new hardware and disruption to development of the launch games are probably more likely to affect the release plans.

Yeah I'm with you. Not only that but if there's any sort of self-isolation, people aren't going to be going to the shops to queue for a new console even if there are no disruptions to the supply chain.

Sony had already cancelled, so there's no difference to them. I don't see either company delaying the release due to E3 being cancelled. Other supply line constraints from the same root cause, maybe.

There are not many people actually going to e3.

I was always curious why it matters at all.

As a consumer you have to wait ages and as a journalist you are there a day earlier or have invites.

It's much cheaper to invite all relevant journalist on a global scale.

But honestly? If I'm able to watch the release show from companies like Ms Sony and co live on YouTube I will do that.

I assume this creates more then enough buzz already.

E3 was for the longest time just an industry show and it did that pretty well there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens just because you have so much of the games industry in the same place. One of my favorites are the couch interviews put on by Giantbomb. They get all sorts of names big and small to come and chat every night. That's the kind of thing a purely digital media strategy can't really replicate.

There's been a shift to siloed announcements anyways. Nintendo Direct have been recurring chunks of announcements, I don't see why Sony and MS wouldn't start doing the same.

Sony: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/state-of-play/

Microsoft: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/insidexbox/

Sony was already skipping E3 anyway.

Nikon delayed their D6 DSLR, and I imagine it will get difficult to even produce things like that at the volume they'd need for a launch.

Not only that, but people will need new stay at home entertainment more than ever for a while.

I doubt an e3 cancellation would cause a delay but the virus has made sourcing hardware a lot harder. If they do keep dates they'll see shortages.