They held one last year under the shadow of the Microsoft acquisition - granted, it wasn’t official yet, but friggin Phil Spencer showed up bc everyone knew it was going to go through - so I don’t think it’s explicitly Microsoft interfering. This feels more like the realization that, like last year, they don’t have that much exciting content to hype right now. They already milked their 3-part WoW xpac news dry, all they’ve got left is… Diablo season 4 or the seasonal new Overwatch character? Can’t build a convention around that.