Gamescom - The world's largest video game fair attracts more than 350,000 visitors to Cologne's nearly 200,000 m² exhibition grounds every year. No wonder big names like Nintendo, EA and Activision are on the list of over 1,000 exhibitors to present their latest video game hits.
Cologne was again to be flooded with gamers from all over the world in summer 2020, but the corona pandemic destroyed, like numerous other plans, this event. But despite the cancellation of Gamescom 2020, there is a small ray of hope as a "digital Gamescom" is currently being worked on.
In this article you will learn how this could work and what the latest information is for this.
In the report of 17.04.2020 on the official Gamescom website it says that Gamescom this year will take place "purely digital". Tickets already purchased will of course be refunded, even if tickets for the digital Gamescom will be on sale. A "digital Gamescom" sounds like a crazy idea at first, but it will actually take place in summer 2020.
Since stage shows make up a large part of the video game fair, they are likely to be available as a livestream on platforms such as Twitch or YouTube. This solution is very likely and also easy for the exhibitors to implement. The question of whether only people with a ticket for the digital Gamescom can watch these streams or whether they will be publicly available remains open.
But the Gamescom is of course not only made up of stage shows, but also of numerous stands where you can test the brand new games of the publishers yourself. There should also be ways to do this, which are not as simple to implement as show live streams. One possible solution would be to provide a personal game code for ticket holders, so that the new video game can be tested from home for a certain period of time.
However, several problems arise here, because on the one hand codes can be resold or hacked and on the other hand ticket holders could do without the appropriate consoles.
Nevertheless, these two possibilities of the live stream and the personal game code seem to be the most likely methods that you can experience on the digital Gamescom.
In addition, a very abstract and curious idea of a "VR Gamescom" is circulating on the Internet. According to this, visitors should be able to virtually stroll through the halls of the video game fair from home via VR glasses and also stand in line for hours for the latest games.
So the principle of the VR Gamescom seems to come closest to a real Gamescom, but the implementation remains more than questionable.
There are two aspects in particular that are the bottlenecks: On the one hand, only a few people have a VR glasses at home, which would result in ticket sales falling far short of expectations. On the other hand, the design and the effort for the planning team would be enormous.
The question of how exactly the digital Gamescom will take place this summer remains unanswered from an official point of view. But whether live streams, personal game codes or a VR Gamescom: This year too, the brand new and long-awaited games will be on show at the digital Gamescom, which you can look forward to.
You can find more news about the Gamescom or price comparisons of the latest video games on Keyfuchs.
