If there is a videogame trade show to rival E3, it would have to be gamescom. It manages to beat E3 in terms of attendees, even though E3 is generally more important for developers and publishers. Last year, gamescom drew one of its biggest crowds yet – 370,000 gamers strong. This number dwarfed E3’s attendees by an incredibly huge margin, with the renowned trade show only managing 69,000. That said, gamescom is fully open to the public at large, making it a much bigger draw for gamers and players, in contrast to E3, which is focused mainly on the industry and the media surrounding it.
In spite of this, it’s still a major international event, and it’s no wonder that Blizzard’s announcement that they would skip the event entirely drew speculation.
Here is the full post from the Blizzard’s site:
As part of a renewed effort this year to maintain our focus on development, for our current games and our future projects, we won’t have a booth at gamescom 2019. The show is an important one for the European and global gaming community, and we’re going to miss meeting players in Cologne this year. You’ll still be able to find Blizzard gear in the gamescom 2019 shop area, and we’re looking forward to returning to the gamescom show floor in the future. We’re also looking forward to sharing more details about the projects we’re currently working on when the time is right.
It's safe to assume, in any case, that Blizzard’s absence could mean big news for its upcoming BlizzCon 2019. Details emerged from Blizzard’s site a few days ago about when Blizzcon takes place this year, and the wait has finally begun. It could be that Blizzard is saving up its huge announcements for that event instead of gamescom, seeing as they’re rerouting all their time and resources towards ‘current games and future projects.’
Who knows, we might even get to see some of the work they did on World of Warcraft Classic during BlizzCon, which I would say is a fair trade for skipping gamescom this year altogether.
Gamescom 2019 will be held from August 21 to August 25, Wednesday to Sunday.
