Xbox's E3 2019 Press Conference Could Be Longest Yet - Big Surprises Coming?

[HARDY]

It's been revealed that the upcoming Xbox E3 2019 press conference will run for two hours, making it Microsoft's longest event in years, and suggesting that a lot of game announcements will be made. There's also the potential for a reveal of the successor to the Xbox One.

The upcoming E3 2019 event is notable by the fact that Sony will not be hosting a conference. The absence of one of the biggest players in the industry has opened a huge hole in the schedule, and the other developers and publishers have moved in to try and scoop up the unattended press coverage that the PlayStation brand is leaving on the table. The world is waiting with bated breath for the PlayStation 5 and the successor the Xbox One to be officially announced, yet Sony is missing the most obvious platform to do so, leaving the floor open for Microsoft to reveal its new system and hog all the headlines.

The runtime for the upcoming Xbox E3 2019 conference has been revealed on the official Xbox Brasil YouTube channel, where it's been confirmed that the event will run for two hours. The Xbox E3 conferences in 2016, 2017 and 2018 ran for around an hour and forty minutes each, which means that Microsoft must have more content than usual to show off if it's bumping up the runtime of its event.

The question now is what announcements are being saved for the Xbox conference? The absence of Sony at E3 2019 means that a lot of third-party developers that would've saved their game announcements for the PlayStation event have been left without a platform, so it's possible that the Xbox conference has been bolstered by announcements for multi-platform games that would normally have been part of Sony's show.

Microsoft has been purchasing video game studios over the past year, which means that they want to be able to compete with Sony and Nintendo in terms of exclusive titles in the upcoming console generation. It's possible that these studios already have games in the pipeline that are ready to be announced. It's been confirmed that Halo Infinite will be shown at E3 2019, but there are also persistent leaks concerning a FromSoftware & George R.R. Martin collaboration called Great Rune that's rumored to be shown during Microsoft's conference. There are also rumors that Fable 4 is due to appear at E3 2019 after being absent from last year's event.

The extended length of the Xbox E3 2019 conference also suggests that there might be an official announcement for the successor to the Xbox One. Sony has started to reveal information about the specifications of the PlayStation 5, which means that Microsoft might want to get a headstart and unveil their new system on a stage where it'll dominate the limelight. E3 2019 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting events in the history of the conference, and Microsoft has a chance to take back a lot of the ground it's lost over the current console generation. The question now is whether the company will make the most of the time it's using, and if it'll be able to take advantage of the absence of its competition.

[SamcroEssex]

It's got to be a big year for them. With Sony skipping they get the floor all to themselves and get to control the news cycle. Unless Sony wants to play spoiler and drops some heavy PS5 news the same week!