diverse

Gamescom 2025 was officially the biggest and most diverse in show history, according to the association that organizes the annual event in Cologne, Germany. Bringing in nearly 400,000 visitors from more than 100 countries, with international participation at an all-time high and its digital reach breaking a new record, the association is calling it the most successful show yet.

Having spent a week in Cologne to cover the show for Game Informer, it was both one of the most exhausting and exciting weeks of my career. I played so many amazing games, spoke to just as many interesting devs, and ultimately, came away from the show excited about the future of gaming, despite the industry’s many, many problems. It turns out, I was one of 357,000 visitors from 128 countries at the show this year. More than 34,000 trade visitors attended the show, and Gamescom saw the strongest growth in this sector from the U.S., China, Canada, and Japan.

Speaking of international participation, a total of 1,568 exhibitors from 72 countries participated on the show floor, “with a foreign share of 70%,” according to a press release. “There were also 40 country pavilions representing 35 countries, including for the first time the pavilion of official partner country Thailand, along with Dubai and Kyrgyzstan.”

Digitally, Gamescom 2025 reached new heights, too, garnering over 630 million views worldwide as of this past Saturday evening (Gamescom’s final day was yesterday). Gamescom says that’s a 105 percent increase compared to last year’s show. Seventy-two million of those views were for Gamescom’s Opening Night Live last Tuesday, marking an 80 percent increase in viewership compared to last year.

“Gamescom combines business and entertainment like no other event worldwide, as shown by 1,568 exhibitors spread across 233,000 square meters of gross exhibition space,” Koelnmesse (the event hall) president and CEO Gerald Böse writes in a press release. “With record figures once again in nearly every category, the enormous variety of experiences and global participation, Gamescom is the most important event for the global gaming community.”

Here are Gamescom 2025 stats, at a glance:

357,000 visitors from 128 countries
Over 34,000 trade visitors, with the strongest growth from the US, China, Canada, and Japan
More than 630 million views across the entire show program (as of Saturday evening) – an increase of 105 percent over the previous year
72 million views for Gamescom Opening Night Live (as of Saturday evening) – an increase of 80 percent over the previous year
5.7 million page views for Gamescom Epix (as of Saturday evening)
1,568 exhibitors from 72 countries, with a foreign share of 70 percent
40 country pavilions from 35 countries
Approximately 233,000 square meters of gross exhibition space
Around 80,000 people at the Gamescom city festival

We have a ton of coverage for Gamescom 2025 up on the Game Informer site, with many more previews for upcoming games to come, so check out some of the pieces so far:

What was your favorite game shown during Gamescom 2025? Let us know in the comments below!

Source link

By the time Sony started printing money releasing its exclusives onto PC, the company had made a name for itself delivering the biggest and best singleplayer games on the market. Its run of solo PS4 exclusives from Bloodborne to The Last of Us Part 2 was so strong that it blew Microsoft’s console strategy out of the water, in a way that the Xbox has arguably never recovered from. Even we PC heads with our vast Steam libraries had to acknowledge those games were pretty great.

Yet for the PlayStation 5, Sony decided it would almost completely ignore that legacy, and instead be all about live service. In 2022, former CEO Jim Ryan promised Sony would make and release 12 live-service games by 2025. As of 2025, only one of these—Helldivers 2—has enjoyed a successful launch. Seven were cancelled before release. Three are supposedly still in development (including the deeply troubled Marathon) and one of them was Concord.

It’s a strategy that has, so far, proven catastrophic, leaving the PS5 largely bereft of quality first-party exclusives. But if you thought gazing upon this virtual graveyard might cause Sony to reconsider its priorities, think again.

Concord – Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games – YouTube

Watch On

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group CEO Herman Hulst was recently asked about Sony’s live-service strategy by the Financial Times (via GamesRadar), as part of an in-depth article about the company’s broader business strategy. “The number [of live-service releases] is not so important,” Hulst told the FT. “What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.”

Instead of changing strategy to avoid massive live-service failures like Concord, or cancellations like The Last of Us Online, Hulst says he basically wants Sony to fail better. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”

To change these massive failures into, er, smaller failures, Hulst says PlayStation has implemented several new safeguards, such as “more rigorous and more frequent testing in many different ways.” According to the FT, this includes a higher priority on group testing, more cross pollination of ideas within Sony, and “closer relationships” between top executives. “The advantage of every failure…is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”

I would be more convinced by what Hulst says if Sony had demonstrated its PS4-era strategy no longer worked before going all in on chasing the theoretical live-service money train. Those glossy singleplayer titles were often enormously expensive to make, and selling games in general has become significantly harder over the last five years. But while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 seems to have been a commercial disappointment, God of War: Ragnarok was the fastest-selling PlayStation title ever on launch in 2022, and had sold 15 million copies a full year before it came to PC in September last year.

Best PC controller 2025

All our current recommendations

Source link

Gamescom 2025 Was The Biggest And Most Diverse In Show History

Here are Gamescom 2025 stats, at a glance:

After cancelling 8 of the 12 live service games Sony promised to release by 2025, PlayStation studios boss says the number doesn’t really matter: ‘What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences’