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For the first time in 24 years, Sony and PlayStation

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IGN's Top 25 PlayStation 4 Games 25 IMAGES

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As reported by Game Informer, Sony and PlayStation will instead be "exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019."“As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community," Sony said in a statement to Game Informer. "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.”Sony was then asked if they would be having an off-site event, similar to how EA and Xbox have been handling E3 in the past couple years.PlayStation senior vice president of communications Jennifer Clark answered, "we will not activate or hold a press conference around E3."In regards to Sony's decision to not host its PlayStation Experience this year, and if it would return next year, Clark responded by saying Sony is "looking at events as a whole and how we can speak more to our fans and continue to wow them.""The timing of PSX and E3 didn't allow for that, but lots of exciting things to come, and we hope to share shortly. Some of our biggest games will have key milestones next year so we will work hard to blow those up."The Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, has been running E3 since the beginning in 1995. In its press release regarding E3 2019, there is no acknowledgment of Sony or PlayStation skipping E3 2019, but there is no mention of them as a confirmed partner.Ironically, today also officially marks five years since Sony launched the PlayStation 4, and with the confirmation that Sony is working on next-generation hardware, when and where Sony will announce its biggest news next year may be the biggest question yet. We have three theories about this move... PlayStation has confirmed and reiterated the comments first made to Game Informer to IGN.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who is shocked by this news but is looking forward to seeing what Sony has in store for us in 2019 to make up for not appearing at E3. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst.