Sony yesterday announced that due to Coronavirus outbreak, they had made the tough decision to skip PAX East, today it’s another event that they confirmed their absence, the Games Developers Conference 2020. Sony joins Facebook in the decision to skip the event that will be hosted on San Francisco next month.
“We have made the difficult decision to cancel our participation in Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus). We felt this was the best option as the situation related to the virus and global travel restrictions are changing daily. We are disappointed to cancel our participation, but the health and safety of our global workforce is our highest concern. We look forward to participating in GDC in the future.”
It has been reported that Coronavirus is getting scary for console manufacturers, the problem lies in the hardware manufacturers. China, the place where Coronavirus was found and has the most infected people, the impact of the virus is already affecting the manufacturing process of large companies like Foxconn. According to ComicBook Foxconn is already quarantining employees which will unavoidable affect companies around the world.
It’s understandable that Sony is doing their best in protecting their workforce, the Coronavirus pose a big threat to mankind and it should be given respect, unnecessary risk of infection should be avoided at all cost, but the perhaps Sony is killing two birds with one bullet. Sony might be opting to keep a low profile as they manage to lower the manufacturing cost of the PlayStation 5.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC 2020) is scheduled to start on March 16, the event is a big oportunity for developers, they will host conferences and have the chance to exhibit their creations, cloud gaming technologies will be the star of the show this year, but we’ll hear more about the next free-to-play web games, social network titles, large-scale MMOs.
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A Nintendo Switch trailer was also released.
According to SteamDB.
An announcement trailer was also released.