Shortly after E3 2019's dates were announced on Thursday, one major player in the gaming industry, Sony, confirmed that it will not be participating in the annual event. This is the first time Sony has skipped E3 since its 1995 inception.

In a statement given to Ars Technica, Sony Interactive Entertainment hinted to a 2019 PR strategy that depends less on physical conferences and more on direct outreach by the company to fans.

"As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community," the statement reads. "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,” the statement concluded.

The news followed an announcement by E3 that its 2019 convention would happen in the range of June 11-13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center—and quotes from corporate leaders at Nintendo and Microsoft. Variety's Brian Crecente reviewed the announcement before it had been sent to the wider press and thus confirmed why Sony was missing from the announcement's quotes.

The news arrives as speculation heats up about next-generation consoles, what with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 each turning five years old this holiday season. Those systems' lifespans have been extended to some extent by mid-generation upgrades in the form of the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, and Sony has insisted that its next console is a few years off. But hotly anticipated games for both platforms, announced at this year's E3, came without release dates attached—and thus invited guesses as to which system(s) they might eventually launch for (or whether they might exist in the cloud).

Between an E3 2019 no-show and a canceled iteration of this year's PlayStation Experience event, fans may have to wait some time for any major public hands-on look at the PlayStation line's future.

Yet as more gaming fans tune in to online video streams of game news and reveals, announcements like Sony's seem somewhat inevitable. Nintendo, in particular, has depended primarily on Nintendo Direct video reveals to make announcements to fans, and it hasn't hosted a physical E3 press conference in years. Still, even Nintendo is on board with E3 2019 in terms of having a show-floor presence and letting attendees go hands-on with future Nintendo games.