Electronic Arts is the latest major game company to announce that it’ll be skipping the press conference portion of E3, instead opting to double down on its own EA Play event the weekend before E3 itself.
It’s a move that, like Sony's before it, seems to lean into a community-first approach to hyping up upcoming projects and one that comes as E3’s impact is being called into question.
“This year you’ll see less talk and more play, with an event entirely focused on the heartbeat of EA Play: our player communities and the games they love,” reads the announcement.
EA says that, instead of the typical press conference, it’ll be hosting its free-to-attend EA Play event on the weekend before E3, or June 8 and 9. Tickets for that event go live next month, but the company also says it’ll be directly live streaming content like gameplay reveals, announcements, and developer insights throughout the weekend as well.
This makes EA the second notable game maker to essentially pull out of E3’s yearly festivities. Sony announced late last year that it wouldn’t have a presence at E3 and would instead focus on finding "inventive opportunities to engage the community.” SIE Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden later touched more on that decision, saying that the industry itself had changed quite a bit since E3’s early days, lessening E3’s impact.
It’s a change that the show itself has seemingly been trying to compensate for through recent decisions like last year's call to open up a select number of passes to the typically industry-focused event to the general public, though that slight shift doesn't look to have been a big enough change to keep Sony and EA interested in the event.