Sony Skipping E3 2019, Possibly to Prepare for PS5 Launch

Sony will be skipping E3 2019 possibly to focus on a potential PS5 launch. The company has been a staple of the long-running video games convention but has dropped out of next year's edition citing "new and familiar ways to engage" its fans in 2019. Traditionally Sony has used E3 to announce and launch key products such as the PS3. The PS4's price and release date was revealed at E3 2013 in addition to Sony confirming that its buyers would be able to trade and lend their games to friends. With the PS4 turning five this year, it's safe to say that Sony's PS5 is in active development. More so when you consider that development kits for the console are already out in the wild.

"As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community," said Sony in a statement. "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 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can't wait to share our plans with you."

And while Sony won't have its own event around or during E3 like EA tends to do, some speculate that it's to focus on the PS5.

"Based on conversations with developers across the industry, I expect the PlayStation 5 to be released in 2020, and the publisher skipping E3 2019 certainly points to that," claims Kotaku's Jason Schreier who has a solid track record when it comes to industry happenings of the more nebulous variety, such as a yet to be announced console.

The PS5 may have a 2020 release date and it will be using AMD's Navi GPU. Previously it was suggested that the PS5 would also be using AMD's Ryzen CPU tech and it seems that AMD will have a hand in the PS5's GPU as well. This is according to a report from WCCFtech citing "sources intimately familiar with the entire situation". In addition to letting slip when we could expect the PS5, it delves deeper into the reasoning for AMD not announcing a new GPU at Computex 2018 - it has found the custom-applications space more lucrative.

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