The shooting game Call of Duty : Black Ops 7 And the rest of the Japanese Saga Resident Evil gave Tuesday the Gamescom kick -off in Germany, one of the biggest salons in video games, during an opening evening in the shape of an appetizer.
Faced with an audience of more than 5,000 people bringing together journalists, video game professionals and fans, Canadian presenter Geoff Keighley will unveil from 8 p.m. and for almost two hours of new images of the superproductions expected in the coming months.
Nearly 335,000 visitors had gone to the 2024 edition and the organizers hope to reconnect with the pre-Cavid attendance figures, which were around 370,000 participants.
As of Wednesday, professionals and amateurs, sometimes disguised as their favorite character, will meet for five days in the huge halls of the Koelnmesse exhibition center, where each studio has its stand and allows visitors to test the latest news.
Absent in 2024, Nintendo signed his return, haloed by the record launch of the Switch 2, while Xbox (Microsoft) will present its new portable consoles scheduled for the end of the year. The Japanese Sony, he prefers to ignore it.
Among the flagship games this year: the new episodes of the Japanese horror sagas Silent Hill and Resident Evil, the long -awaited suite of a nugget of the independent scene, Hollow Knight : Silksongor Metroid Prime 4new opus from the science fiction series from Nintendo.
Layoffs in the background
However, the atmosphere promises to be mixed among the 1,500 exhibitors: if all the economic lights are green among the main publishers, the waves of layoffs continue.
“The sector has experienced a difficult period in the past two years, with job cuts, closed studios, interrupted projects,” observes Felix Falk, general manager of the German Association of the Games Industry and Corganizer of the event.
“It is not unusual in the very dynamic video game industry, but it is not delightful when it happens. According to the Game Industry Layoffs site, nearly 30,000 employees in the sector have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2023, including more than 4,000 this year.
