Looks like Sony will be joining Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, and Take-Two by not attending this year’s Gamescom event held in Germany.

In a statement issued to German publication Games Wirtschaft, a spokesperson for the PlayStation firm confirmed it would not attend this year’s event, which is due to take place in August and will be its first in-person show since the pandemic.

The organizers claim that over 250 companies will attend this year’s event, but at the time of writing, only a handful of major publishers including Bandai Namco, THQ Nordic, and Koch Media have publicly confirmed.

VGC understands that one issue is that many publishers have simply stopped planning pre-release game demos since the pandemic, such as those made available at events like Gamescom, and thus would have little to show at a big public show. Another reason is that most of these companies are hosting their own event like Nintendo’s Direct and PlayStation State of Play which is also rumored to be streaming soon.

Gamescom 2022 is set to take place from August 24-28 and will be a hybrid event held on-site in Cologne and simultaneously online.