What can we learn from the shape and size of the Gamescom booths on the show floor this year?
Well, just like last year, western publishers like Ubisoft and Take-Two are getting edged out for lavish stands from the likes of Tencent, Krafton, NetEase, Hoyoverse and Bandai Namco.
The exception, perhaps, was Xbox, whose combined might with Activision and Blizzard meant that Microsoft’s gaming arm took up about a third of a hall.
Perhaps understandably for a pretty hardcore consumer games show, King was nowhere to be seen on the show floor. The only mobile game on the Xbox stand was Diablo Immortal.
Interestingly, there was no King branding on the giant Xbox-ActiBlizz stand in the trade area either. Mobile, it seems, is just not a thing for Xbox at Gamescom.
Krafton is putting a lot of weight behind Dark and Darker Mobile. It paid Geoff Keighley a pretty penny – we assume – to be part of Opening Night Live on Tuesday, and had a giant consumer-facing booth at Gamescom promoting D&D Mobile, PUBG Battlegrounds and also life sim Inzoi.
Hoyoverse’s trio of titles – Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero – seemed to inspire the most cosplay as we strolled around the consumer part of the show.
And as was noted by Tilting Point’s Simone Luxi in his Devcom talk on Monday, this high-spending, anime-loving crowd had an entire hall of merch to explore elsewhere at the show, which was roughly split between what you might consider anime IP and classic gaming IP.
Samsung’s large booth seemed to be promoting a little of everything – gaming headphones, phones, tablets, esports and something to do with Genshin Impact, which resulted in the giant mech-type character looming over attendees in Hall 6.
A similarly random selection of brands combined above for a stand featuring T-Mobile, Mercedes, an esports team called SK Gaming, Sony, retail brand Rewe and also – for some reason – competitive Brawl Stars and Stumble Guys play.
As you might expect, Tencent’s western gaming label Level Infinite occupied a giant slice of Hall 6, but the focus was less on mobile than it was last year.
A big feature of its 2023 stand, Assassin’s Creed Jade, was nowhere to be seen, and instead several of its cross-platform titles took centre stage, including that Dune MMO, complete with this striking sandworm:
Like last year, Namco Bandai also spent big dollar on a very showy booth. No One Punch Man this year, though – instead it was incoming cross-platform title Dragonball Spark Zero that took centre stage.
NetEase’s presence was nowhere near the scale of local rival Tencent’s, though it was still larger than most western publishers. Marvel Rivals, another title featured prominently in Opening Night Live, was a big focus, as was Arena Breakout: Infinite, the PC incarnation of its mobile shooter.
Spare a thought, however, for whatever was being shown at the deserted – but pretty big – Qiddiya Gaming stand. A quick circuit of the booth did not explain what game, if any, was on show there, and we had to Google what Qiddiya Gaming actually is (it’s some sort of Saudi development project).
A tip for next year, then: if you’re going to spend a ton of money on a fancy Gamescom booth, have a game that’s worth showing and also make it clear what exactly it is:
Fellow Saudi-owned brand Savvy Games Group, now the owner of Scopely, had a very expensive-looking and large presence in the business area, as did Krafton, Plaion and Level Infinite.
Elsewhere, Fingersoft claimed a corner of the much quieter family hall with a spot for Lego Hill Climb Adventures:
And a fun final shoutout to Supercell, which had what must have been trade area’s most low-key booth:
Hello to whoever was doing meetings in this spartan white cube, we hope you’re having a good show.
