August is usually looked upon as a somewhat ho-hum month since not a lot happens. Game releases can be tepid at best and groundbreaking announcements are few and far between since those within the industry are too busy prepping for the always massive Holiday gaming season. I may have a bit of bias when it comes to August seeing as how my birthday occurs at the end of the month, but the month could get a bit of buzz thanks to Sony.
Perhaps it’s because the event is dwindling in size, but the European centric industry tradeshow that is Gamescom is indeed still happening next month. Over the last few years Gamescom has certainly gotten smaller, especially with the announcement Microsoft made that they would not be attending the event this year. But for whatever reason they may have, Sony is still showing up to the wonderful place of Cologne Germany (a place I like to imagine has tons of good sausages and women that dress like it’s Oktoberfest all the time) to make a few key announcements.
Sony has revealed that they’re once again keeping the Gamescom tradition alive by holding a press conference on August 14th. The attitude upon hearing such news may not be that shocking since when has a press conference announcement ever resulted in mass elation of a high-five inducing nature? However, there is the possibility that Sony could announce some goodness as some of the previous press conferences the company held at Gamescom resulted in the reveal of things such as the slimmer PS3 SKU and Resistance 3.
With rumors swirling of a new PS3 SKU on the horizon it could be possible that Sony will once again make that announcement at Gamescom. On the software front things are trickier, but there is the chance we could learn more info on European developed games such as Beyond: Two Souls or learn the release date of LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita.
One thing that gamers shouldn’t prepare themselves for is a ton of info on new games for the Vita. We’ve been promised of new Vita announcements for months, but after how the system was nearly forgotten about at Sony’s E3 conference this year I honestly don’t have much confidence that we’ll see new titles outside of announced properties such as LBP and if we’re lucky maybe an update on Killzone Vita.
So is Sony’s announcement of a Gamescom press event something that is worthy enough to ready our bodies for? I don’t know just yet, but seeing as how Gamescom will essentially be a Sony + 3rd party centric tradeshow it could be possible that the event will play host to key announcements that will tickle the fancy of both gamers and those in the press industry.
