Organizers expect the event, which runs through Sunday in the western city of Cologne, to draw more than 300,000 people as companies promote big upcoming releases like “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.”
The industry is expected to generate more than $180 billion in revenue this year and attract more than 3.4 billion gamers, according to analyst firm Newzoo.
But sales are still far from the peaks reached during the pandemic.
As smaller studios struggle to survive, major publishers are imposing drastic cost-cutting exercises and thousands of workers are being laid off.
“I see studios that inspired me disappear and that terrifies me,” David Rabineau, a French developer who runs the independent studio Homo Ludens, told AFP.
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– ‘Sharp drop’ – At least 11,000 workers have already been laid off this year, more than in all of 2023, according to Game Industry Layoffs, a website that tracks the numbers.
US company Bungie, creator of “Halo” and “Destiny,” is the latest to announce layoffs: last month it said it would cut 220 jobs, or 17 percent of its workforce.
The games maker, bought by Sony in 2022, said it had tried to expand too quickly and pointed to “a sharp decline in the games industry” in general.
Rabineau, a regular Gamescom visitor, said publishers were cutting their budgets and being more selective about which games they would accept.
“They want to take fewer and fewer risks,” he said.
Stéphane Rappeneau, a professor of video game economics at the Sorbonne in Paris, said publishers were struggling with a drop in funding.
Investment firms had poured money into video games during the pandemic boom, but were now turning to sectors such as artificial intelligence.
“Publishers are passing on these financing difficulties to the studios,” Rappeneau explains.
– Aged consoles –
Mat Piscatella, an analyst at US market research firm Circana, said it had been a “tumultuous year”.
He noted that all three major consoles (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series) were already past their peak.
He also noted that older games like “Fortnite,” “Minecraft” and “League of Legends” continue to capture players’ time and money, to the detriment of new releases.
Gamescom’s advertising has been largely based on the promise of new game announcements.
But according to Newzoo, games released before 2018 accounted for nearly 61 percent of total time spent playing games on computers and consoles last year worldwide, excluding China and India.
“Breaking into the world of new video games has never been so difficult,” said Piscatella.
But despite all the difficulties, he said he hoped the industry had weathered the storm.
The long-awaited release of “Grand Theft Auto VI” next year, as well as Nintendo’s unveiling of its successor, the Switch, should give the industry a boost, he said.
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