EA Play Live promises ‘world premieres’ during digital event in June

With E3 canceled this year, Electronic Arts will present its annual EA Play Live event digitally in 2020.

“EA Play Live goes digital in 2020,” Electronic Arts tweeted Monday. “See you on June 11th at 4pm PST... World premieres, news and more!” Last year, EA dropped its traditional E3 press conference for the EA Play live streams, which were held over a series of days ahead of the annual video game event. The company hasn’t officially attended E3, instead opting to hold independent EA Play events, since 2015. This year, EA Play Live will be broadcast for one day — Thursday, June 11.

Monday’s announcement is sparse. EA didn’t hint at what fans can expect, aside from the “world premieres, news and more.” During EA Play 2019, Respawn Entertainment showed off footage from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was released in November 2019, and showed off a new Apex Legends character. It also revealed a new The Sims 4 expansion called Island Living.

E3 2020 was originally slated for June 9-11 in Los Angeles. The event was canceled in March due to concerns over the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 11 — the day E3 was canceled — and many countries have banned large gatherings of people.

Large-scale events will likely be discouraged for a while.