Focusing on fan experiences instead
In recent years, Microsoft has treated gamescom kind of like a second part to E3. Xbox would hold a press conference at the beginning of the week to announce new games and to give better looks at titles that hadn’t yet come out. It very much had all the pomp and circumstance that the world’s largest video game convention deserves.
That’s changing this year. Xbox has revealed its plans for gamescom 2016, and they don’t include a press conference. Instead, there will be some sort of Fanfest where people are given the opportunity to demo the games that were featured the most heavily at E3. Things like Gears of War 4, ReCore, and Sea of Thieves are all good bets.
As for why Xbox is scaling back its show, well, it’s possible that the platform-holder just doesn’t have enough new stuff to warrant a media briefing. It’s in a position where it has a good number of already-announced first-party games that we’ve seen plenty of. With most of those titles coming out this fall, it makes sense that Xbox doesn’t want to take the spotlight off of them.
If this move sounds familiar, that’s because it was just one year ago that PlayStation did the same thing. Instead, PlayStation opted to hold a press conference at Paris Games Week. Whether Xbox follows suit is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s clear: When it comes to gamescom, some of the most important companies in the industry would prefer to show games rather than announce them — for now, anyway.
Xbox at gamescom 2016 [Xbox Wire]
