Nintendo wasn’t at Gamescom in 2012, but the company has confirmed that they’ll be returning this year, in 2013. This is of course good news for folks in Europe who want to get their hands on the next, big 3DS games before they’re released.
Nintendo did not appear at Gamescom, and this was the official explanation:
Whilst Gamescom is a fantastic show, Nintendo has taken the decision not to attend this year’s event. Instead Nintendo is planning a number of sampling events later this year inline with the European Marketing-, PR- and Event-activities in which Nintendo´s fans will have the opportunity to play upcoming games. Further details will be announced soon.
But I don’t think this is an “oh, we just didn’t have anything to show” sort of moment. A similar thing happened with E3, since Nintendo chose to announce the 3DS XL only a couple of weeks after what is usually the venue to make big announcements. When the 3DS XL was announced outside of an assumption, and with Nintendo not making an appearance at GamesCom, that assumption has only grown stronger:
Nintendo is distancing themselves from events they can’t completely control.
That’s not to say they’ll avoid Gamescom forever, or that they plan to leave E3. But the signs point to them wanting much more control over their announcements. Like I’ve mentioned before, they want to “train” us to expect the big announcements from their Nintendo Direct broadcasts, rather than other venues. It’s an Apple-ish approach that they’re adopting, and I think it’ll become much more obvious over the coming months.
What do you think?
(via mcvnordic.com)
Silja Gulicher, a spokesperson for Nintendo of Germany has said that, “although Gamescom is one of the most important fairs of the year for us, we’ve decided not to take part this year. Instead we plan to broaden our post-E3 activities to introduce our retail and media partners to the Wii U and the newest titles for 3DS.”
But, while this is a bummer, they are “planning a whole array of events that will offer our fans the opportunity to try out our latest titles”, and there’ll be “more information about that soon”.