EA has decided to skip the E3 press conference this year, opting to instead focus its time on their own event, EA Play 2019. In place of one massive presentation of what the company is going to be focusing on, they have instead opted to do multiple live streams, not far different in concept from what Nintendo does with its Direct press releases. These live streams will last a total of two days, from the 7th of June up until the 8th. The main purpose of the live streams are to allow the teams working on their projects to show off and communicate directly with their audience, demonstrating new gameplay and directly answering any questions that may be posed to them during the live stream.
While EA is not the first company to pull out of E3 this year (Sony bailing out before them), the timing of the change may not have come as a surprise. With the release of Anthem, a live service game that, until recently, is still trying to fix major bugs that have popped up in the looter shooter (the possibility of crashing your PS4 system as well as weapon damage numbers being cosmetic), EA might be avoiding a large-scale Q&A session in order to avoid questions about issues that are plaguing their games from overtaking any potential announcements they have. However, IGN’s own Ryan McCaffrey, Executive Editor of Previews, believes it is because of a lack of major titles being released by EA this calendar year that no major press conference is being held. Should that be the case, this may be a year for EA to collect itself and rethink it’s strategy on releasing games that sorely need time to complete.
EA Play 2019 will be held from June 7th-9th at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Hands-on trials of their games will be available during the last two days of the event. Tickets go on sale next month.
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