Gamescom opens as gaming industry eyes GTA VI boost

Gamescom opens in Cologne on Tuesday as the video games industry looks to major releases, including the coming Grand Theft Auto VI, for a boost after job cuts and rising competition.

The sold-out opening ceremony starts at 8:00 pm local time and is expected to highlight new games for about two hours. Visitors will be able to play new releases at hundreds of stations from Wednesday.

Organisers said more than 1,600 exhibitors will showcase more than 800 games. Nearly 360,000 people attended Gamescom last year, close to pre-Covid levels of about 370,000.

Grand Theft Auto VI will not be shown at Gamescom. Rockstar Games has scheduled a Netflix preview for Thursday ahead of the game's Nov. 19 launch, which is expected to draw attention from the Cologne show.

Nintendo is set to present Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, and Microsoft's Xbox division will show Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and Gears of War: E-day. Sony, the maker of the PlayStation 5, is not attending.

Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business who studies video game economics, said the market is crowded. Console prices have also risen as memory chips become more expensive amid demand from the AI industry.

Overall spending in the US video game market dropped 21% in June. Nearly 10,000 people have lost their jobs in the gaming sector since January, and the industry is on course for 15,000 layoffs this year, according to the ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker.