Why Gamescom Could Overtake E3
It seems E3′s days are numbered as the world’s foremost videogames exhibition. Here’s why…
Strength In Numbers (1)
The relative attendance figures for each convention speak for themselves, really. While the LA convention center managed to squeeze just over 45,000 industry professionals and bedroom bloggers through their doors, Cologne’s mixture of public and paid access boasted over 250,000.
What’s more, that number is growing year on year, from around the 200,000 mark in 2008 to 245,000 twelve months ago. E3 on the other hand continues to shrink from its bombastic 2005 best.
Strength In Numbers (2)
It appears as if the creative end of the industry is taking the convention far more seriously, too. Despite a few notable absentees (Sega, Capcom), the show nevertheless attracted close to double the number of exhibitors than its American counterpart.
Granted, a lot of these will have been suppliers of USB keys with switches on them, but you can’t argue with maths.
Sleigh Bells
You’d have thought there’s at least some value for publishers in allowing access to your hottest winter titles within both the most lucrative and geographically central European market. Closer to what Americans might term the holiday season, there’s little to distract folks from that vital task of anticipating a purchase.
Joe Public
Along similar lines, the chance to have so many members of Europe’s most lucrative gaming market, second only to the UK, anticipating future purchases must be difficult to pass up.
It’s easily arguable that, given the more even distribution of its population compared to the US, such a show offers the average European a greater chance of taking part than their new world cousins.
Language Abuse
It’s about time a videogame show took place that makes us Brits feel more at home, linguistcally. Euro-centric marketing is always welcome, but we still feel like sneaking over to those ‘Medal Of Honor’ hoardings and scribbling a U on them. No we haven’t just run out of reasons why this is the case…
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id like to add that after watching the sony press conference gamescom 2010
sony have already won 2011. totally killed the competition
ratchet and clank all 4 one
resistance 3
infamous 2
killzone 3
possible acecombat horizon exclusive.
this year , theve already had , MAG, HEAVY RAIN, GOD OF WAR 3, MODNATION RACERS, GT5, LITTLE BIG PLANET 2.
thats 6 blockbuster exclusives in a year.
thats 5 exclusive blockbusters already for next year. and theve’ said there’s yet more they havn’t shared with us yet.
go suck on that pc and xbox gamers, u mights have halo. but thats all u got. i hope your happy with it. id be askin for more.
Good start but I feel it could have been taken much further. The numbers clearly speak for themselves adn it’s telling to see just how seriously both the publishers/developers and journalists were taking the event. Gamescom has developed into much more than just a European (read – second hand) version of E3 that arrives a month or two late. Exclusive, premiere material was on show in Cologne this year and there were some truly exciting new vids and announcements – Bioshock Infinite’s dev walkthrough being one of them.
Some good things came out of gamescom, it shows there is strength in this industry, more so than ever before.
Whatever console you own its an exciting time to be a gamer, I just wish Sony and Microsoft stopped this ‘exclusives’ war, I mean we now have Metal Gear and Final Fantasy, and the PS3 has Mass Effect 2, and the world hasn’t ended. Stop this stupidity and share the games, this will mean bigger profit and excellent sequels as a result!