As E3 2020 got cancelled, it had to have impacted Sony‘s and Microsoft‘s plans, resulting in both companies developing a plan B.

Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, wrote on Twitter that „With E3 cancelled, a lot of the planned reveals, announcements have been moved out of that single week. Some are now much earlier, others much later. Some still during E3 week, of course. The first proper next-gen console/games showcase is much earlier too.” The E3 week announcements are probably going to happen during IGN’s Summer of Gaming, their E3 digital replacement event.

In a reply, he added the following: „This is the one time I will add a caveat, for the last sentence in this case, as we are living through an unprecedented situation and this is the one time where external factors such as COVID-19 could change plans right at the last minute. But we’ll see.” So even the plan B could be changing, even for Sony: they must have been initially planning to have a PlayStation Meeting for the PlayStation 5 as they had with the PlayStation 4.

VGC also chimed in, based on their sources: „One person with knowledge of Sony’s plans told VGC that the company was recently planning to hold its significant PlayStation 5 reveal in May.” (It could be May 19.) „It’s also been claimed Microsoft is planning reveals for May, in addition to a digital E3 showcase, which matches with what VGC has been told.”

They also noted that the coronavirus pandemic has recently disrupted Sony Interactive Entertainment’s marketing plans, including those for The Last of Us Part II, so we don’t know if it will go with the planned reveal date or not. (Likely not. June 26, however, could be a new release date, and then, Ghost of Tsushima could get a month of delay. We wrote about it recently.)

And finally, Tom Phillips, a news editor at Eurogamer, added: „Without a firm deadline to hit for E3 builds and with teams having lost time moving to remote working, expect announcements to be more spaced out this year. We’re going to get what were E3 reveals in May, June, July…” So we’ll have a much more solid year with news instead of everything happening over three days.

Both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X are planned to arrive this Holiday season. The pricing is unknown at the moment.

Source: Gematsu

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