Gamescom 2022: New challengers to the fore as traditional players scale back
For years, three of the largest exhibitors at Gamescom have been incumbent console manufacturers Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, all of which tend to use the event to promote their latest hardware and upcoming exclusive first-and-third-party titles. However, two of these industry giants were conspicuous by their absence in Cologne this year: Nintendo and Sony had no physical presence at the show at all. Microsoft was present, but its presence on the show floor was about half the size as it was in 2019 - when the last physical show took place in 2019 before the COVID pandemic put a halt on in-person events. Indeed, some companies remain understandably reticent to send representatives to, or invest heavily in showcasing at, events like Gamescom during a period of unprecedented ongoing uncertainty. But, arguably, with Starfield’s release being pushed back to 2023 and the ongoing saga of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox had the least reason of the three to exhibit: the imminent September 2022 release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and the scheduled November 2022 arrival of Sony’s flagship 4Q22 first-party title God of War Ragnarok would, in previous years, create a huge buzz in Cologne. Instead, their absence at the show painted a bleak – if admittedly incomplete – picture of the current state of the console market.
Fittingly, the relative silence at this year’s show this also coincides with a distinct slowdown in the console space, with all three manufacturers reporting lower-than-expected engagement and year-on-year declines in some console segments during H2 2022. Some correction was, of course, expected following the pandemic-induced gaming boom but other factors – such as hardware supply limitations,
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