Xbox’s E3 booth won’t actually be at E3, but it isn’t going far

Appropriately, it’s all taking place at the Microsoft Theater

Yesterday, we wrote about the sprawl of E3 events as the week’s timeline gets longer and longer. There’s a different kind of sprawl too, though. There’s the physical sprawl of several different publishers holding their festivities outside the doors of the Los Angeles Convention Center. That’s a trend that at least one more company will partake in for 2018’s show.

Xbox has announced its E3 2018 plans, and they include a move across the street. Xbox won’t be inside the convention center like it usually is. Instead, it’s packing up and going to the Microsoft Theater — which is only a five-minute walk from the LACC.

The reasoning is the same logic that dictates all of these moves: E3 is increasingly a fan-oriented experience. Taking its wares offsite allows Xbox to let more people see its games while also creating isolation from all the other distractions of E3. For what it’s worth, Microsoft stresses that this was coordinated with the ESA and that it’ll still have a Mixer booth inside E3 proper.

The other notable facet of Xbox’s E3 plans confirm what we suspected yesterday: The Xbox press conference will be on Sunday June 10 at 1pm Pacific. However, there’s an unexpected twist. For the first time since I’ve been doing this (2010, the Kinect Space Poncho year), Microsoft won’t be at USC’s Galen Center for its briefing. Instead, it’ll be — you guessed it, at the Microsoft Theater. That’s the one-stop shop for everything Xbox this year.

E3 2018: Microsoft Readies Biggest E3 Showing Ever [Xbox Wire]