The view of Kolnmesse, where Gamescom is held for a crowd of 370,000 people.
The view of Kolnmesse, where Gamescom is held. The picture is from 2019.
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The DeanBeat: How Germany does gaming events right with Gamescom

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

In the past, Gamescom (the giant fan event in Cologne, Germany) was a sideshow for the worldwide game industry. Companies could choose to come or skip it. They made their announcements at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles in June. Fans made Gamescom overcrowded. But based on my impressions of Gamescom 2019, the German event is growing up.

In 2018, 370,000 people attended the video game trade fair in Cologne, and perhaps an equal number attended this year. The German people are quite smart in that most of them leave Cologne at this time to go somewhere else. I left by Wednesday morning to escape most of the crowds. But I saw enough to see what the show does right and what E3 could learn from it if it is to survive.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.