Xbox’s E3 press conference won’t be the same day and time that it always is

Xbox One day earlier

Early indications are that this will not be your standard fare E3. Even if the quality of the reveals is about the same as usual, the format of the whole show has significantly changed. Last week, the ESA announced that it’s selling tickets to the public this year. Now, Microsoft has ventured out of its comfort zone too.

Late this morning, we received an email from Microsoft that served as a save the date of sorts (February is too early for this kind of thing). It tells us that the Xbox E3 briefing will be on Sunday afternoon at 2pm this year. Here’s the graphic that was attached:

Anyone who follows this sort of thing knows that Microsoft’s slot was early Monday morning. For the longest time, that’s when the Xbox presser would be, followed by Ubisoft and then finally PlayStation. That was the order of events, our first hectic day when E3 was truly definitely here.

But, E3 has become more and more of a sprawl in recent years, as more companies want their share of the limelight. Two years ago, Bethesda’s big event was held on Sunday; last year, both Bethesda and EA took advantage of Sunday to get their messaging out before it could be lost to all the other games news. Now, Xbox leaves the Monday fray to join an almost-equally frantic Sunday fray. We will almost certainly be flying to Los Angeles on Saturday this year.

The other interesting thing to note about this email is that the background is a picture of the Project Scorpio hardware that Microsoft showed last year. We’ve known for a long time that Project Scorpio would be an emphasis for Xbox this year, as it’s supposed to launch during the holidays. This seems like confirmation of that while also working double duty as a fitting tech-like image to drum up enthusiasm for a tech-adjacent press conference.