News Sony Won't Attend PAX East This Year Because of the Coronavirus Outbreak

[Admin]

Sony announced that it won't participate in PAX East this year because of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Sony Won't Attend PAX East This Year Because of the Coronavirus Outbreak : Read more

 

[Giroro]

Too many companies are using the coronavirus as a catch-all excuse to get out of doing things they didn't want to do in the first place. If a company with no direct ties to the affected region wants to use the panic to lower earnings targets without scaring investors too much, ok I get it. They just want to make it look like they had some amazing year by wildly beating those targets...
But dropping out on an American trade show? This makes Sony look weak and alarmist, considering the rate of infection has steadily been declining since they first said they were going. If Sony doesn't want to go because big gaming trade shows don't make business sense for them anymore, they can just say so. They already dropped out of E3 awhile ago.

Or maybe I'm off-base, and there's some secret outbreak in Boston that nobody is talking about.

 

[bit_user]

They already dropped out of E3 awhile ago.

Did they ever give a reason for that?

What's the supposed benefit of them attending cons like PAX, anyhow? Is it just to get influencers and gaming press to talk & write about their upcoming titles? Wouldn't they probably do that, regardless?

 

[Giroro]

Did they ever give a reason for that?

What's the supposed benefit of them attending cons like PAX, anyhow? Is it just to get influencers and gaming press to talk & write about their upcoming titles? Wouldn't they probably do that, regardless?

I don't know if they ever directly said why, but I think it was partly because they saw how "Nintendo Direct" was more effective and economical, and partly to help get PSE off the ground.

PAX is (was?) a much more fan focused than a media expo than E3 , but yes it's all marketing hype and publicity.
I agree that the gaming press will write about the upcoming games regardless of how they get details about it. E3 had historically been more drawing in attention from things like local newspapers or broadcast TV... which isn't really how most people get their news any more.