gamescom posts

The organizers of the annual Games Convention Online have announced that plans for the third annual event devoted to online games have been canceled. The event was to have been held in Leipzig, Germany on July 7-8. In a statement on its official web site the organizers stated, " ... the idea on its own didn't suffice to organize an economically successful trade fair and congress."

Previously the organizers held a massive games convention in Leipzig that started in 2002 and attracted most of the major game publishers. However in 2009 the game industry decided to support a rival event, the Gamescom show in Cologne. The Leipzig team launched a new event devoted to online gaming that started in 2009 and which brought in over 43,000 attendees. However the 2010 event was closed to the public and there was no word on how many people attended.

Perhaps the biggest announcement from Gamescom for PC gamers was for the reveal of Age of Empires Online. The upcoming revival of the RTS game franchise as a free-to-play downloadable online game was in full playable form on the Gamescom exhibit hall in Germany this past week.

The game's developer Robot Entertainment filmed a typical live game presentation from Gamescom this past week. The two part video (you can see the second part after the jump) does have a German man handling the presentation but at least it gives you an idea of how the game looks and plays with its "cartoony" graphics. We should have a ton more to reveal about Age of Empires Online before its planned 2011 launch.

The new game announcements from Gamescom keep coming this week. Today it was revealed that a sequel to 2000's fantasy RPG Risen is in development. Risen 2 will once again be developed by Piranha Bytes and will be published by Deep Silver.

The news on Risen 2 comes from the World of Risen fan site who said the announcement of the sequel came at Gamescom during a Deep Silver press conference. No other info on the sequel, including a release date, was mentioned in the news post. The original game, set on a island filled with mythological style creatures, got mostly positive reviews for the PC version but the Xbox 360 port had some technical issues that kept its reviews scores on the low side.

[Via Blue's News]

Torchlight was one of our favorite games of 2009, and a contender for game of the year as well. An independent title made by refugees from the Diablo development team, it blew us away with its visual charm and gameplay depth. However, it lacked multiplayer, which was the only crippling omission in such a brilliant hack'n'slash title. Developer Runic Games is correcting that with Torchlight 2, as this trailer shows so plainly.

There are two really interesting bits in this Gamescom trailer. First is that Runic Games actually read the criticism directed at the original game, both from fans and professionals. It's always good to know your opinions are getting heard. While this part of the trailer is hardly flashy, it's still satisfying. The other important part is the display of all the new features they've packed into Torchlight 2, such as outdoor environments, multiplayer co-op, and all those flashy graphics you know and love.

Download HD Torchlight 2 Gamescom Trailer (25 MB)
Check out all Torchlight 2 downloads

With Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine now confirmed as coming to the PC, the folks at the upcoming action game's publisher THQ and Warhammer owners Games Workshop have set up a reward system for the game's fan based. Fans can join the game's "Honor Guard" that will give them access to "the latest news, exclusive access to first look assets and receive reward points for viral activity" surrounding the Relic Entertainment-developed game.

This week at Gamescom in Germany, THQ will give attendees an Ultramarine cloth patch that will have info on how to download an exclusive "For the Emperor" ring tone. That same patch will be given out this Saturday during Games Workshop's Games Day event in Baltimore. The patch is the first of five items that can be collected at various events over the next few months.

The team at ArenaNet promised that the first actual live gameplay demos for Guild Wars 2 would be shown at Gamescom this week and it looks like that's indeed the case. While there's still no "official" footage of the upcoming fantasy MMO sequel from publisher NCsoft it looks like the Italian-based site Multiplayer.it has filmed a monitor with live gameplay from the Gamescom exhibit hall.

The video footage on YouTube is not exactly the best quality (people are walking in front of the camera at one point) but it does show quite a bit of combat and magic action from the demo build of the game along with what looks like some player controlled turret action. Hopefully NCsoft will provide a gameplay trailer that's much clearly and in higher resolution later this week.

[Via Massively]

A little while ago, the internets were all ablaze when leaked info and screenshots from a strategy game called Spartan were released. The game was supposedly under development by Robot Entertainment with Microsoft Games Studios as the publisher. At the time neither company would comment on the leak when contacted by Big Download.

However it looks like the waiting may be close to being over as next week's Gamescom show in Germany could see the official reveal of Robot Entertainment's title. A post on the developer's web site from the developer's community manager states, "I've spent the last several days getting all my ducks in a row for our little trip to GamesCom next week." When asked by a fan on Robot Entertainment's Facebook page if there would be a reveal of "Game 1.0" at the show the reply was, "You'll have to wait and see." Microsoft has already said it plans to make a number of announcements at a press conference just before Gamescom begins on Tuesday. Could Robot Entertainment's game be one of them?

You can add one more teaser for a big game announcement of some kind for next week's Gamescom event in Germany. Epic Games' producer of Bulletstorm, Tanya Jessen, used her Twitter account to post up word that, "A #Bulletstorm sized unveil coming to Games-Com - I'd tell you to hold onto your hats, but that won't matter when your HEAD EXPLODES :D"

Some have speculated that Epic Games might be announcing yet another new game at the show but we think that the reveal will have something to do with Bulletstorm. After all we still don't know if the game from Epic and co-developer People Can Fly will have any multiplayer modes. Hmmmm...sounds like something that could get a Gamescom reveal to us.

After two years as a small media only event, E3 came back with a roar in 2009 as a full fledged trade show event and all indications are that 2010's E3 later in June will be even bigger. But there's another huge event just on the horizon: Gamescom in Cologne Germany in late August. It debuted in 2009 with over 200,000 attendees.

With two huge events happening so close together, a number of game publishers are spending lots of money to attend both E3 and Gamescom. But will they continue to do so? Computer and Video Games chatted with Namco Bandai VP Olivier Comte who stated that if E3 truly returns to its heights of four years ago, "the industry will have to choose between E3 and GamesCom, because two events within three months that cost a lot of money for all of the publishers will be too much." Comte seems to give the advantage to E3 because it's held in the US.

It's not a secret that NCsoft has avoided having an official presence at E3 for the past few years and E3 2010 will be no exception. That means that they won't be showing off Guild Wars 2, the long awaited MMO from developer ArenaNet. In fact in ArenaNet's latest blog entry, its marketing head Chris Lye has called E3 an "anti-fan" event. He added, "As the marketing guy, if I'm going to spend a boatload of money on a booth, videos, props, etc., I want to be able to share it with the folks who'll geek-out on it the most – the fans!."

Which is why ArenaNet has chosen to give Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, Germany the honor of being the first public place to play a build of Guild Wars 2 when the consumer/trade event is held on August 19-22. In addition the game will be playable at PAX Prime in Seattle a couple of weeks later on September 3-5. And if you are lucky enough to be attending San Diego Comic-Con on July 22-25 you can still meet up with ArenaNet team members (although the game itself won't be there).