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In This Edition
- Gamescom speaks
- More European gamers spending
- The Game Business heads to cologne
- Plus! Battlefield 6, PlayStation strategy and Take-Two numbers
Hello there! Welcome back to The Game Business Show and Newsletter.
It’s Gamescom season, and so here is our bumper Gamescom preview Show, featuring acclaimed producer, host, writer, podcaster and human being Lucy James, who returns for her second stint in the guest host role.
In this edition, we chat to Gamescom organiser game (that’s the german games industry trade association), while data firm Ampere shares some insight into consumer behaviour across Europe. We also touch upon PlayStation’s apparent pivot away from hardware, Take-Two’s latest financials and the huge beta numbers achieved by Battlefield 6.
This kicks off our Gamescom coverage, which is been sponsored by Keywords Studios and Green Man Gaming.
You can check out the full Show above, or I’ve picked out the key headlines below.
Enjoy!
Gamescom had a “responsibility” to step-up after E3 died
The death of E3 wasn’t entirely a good thing for Gamescom, the event organiser told The Game Business.
In an interview ahead of the show, Felix Falk – the MD of the german trade body game, which operates Gamescom – said that E3 and Gamescom actually enjoyed a strong symbiotic relationship between the major US trade event collapsed in 2023.
“We were in a great partnership with E3 through the years, and it was never a competition. It was more… announce your game at E3 and play it at Gamescom. In some ways it was good because people expect us to be the major, global week for games with the highest visibility for everyone. So that’s our responsibility to present a stage for the industry to fulfil this.
“This need is also a disadvantage because [Gamescom is] not so strong in the calendar. So sometimes we had to deal with the HQ teams more, as it needs to fit the global calendar for companies.
“In the past years, it was a struggle [to get people on-board] and there were a lot of discussion with some of those companies. But, if you see the line-up now, and who is part of Gamescom, almost everyone is there. So, we were successful in getting everyone, well almost everyone, back to Gamescom.
“And you can do what you want to do marketing-wise. Whether it’s for the community and their engagement, and also getting involved with creators, general media, special media, politics… Gamescom is the best place to do that.”
Falk said that Gamescom’s goal isn’t to grow the audience on the ground, which already sees around 350,000 people come through its doors, but to speak to more visitors around the globe via digital channels.
“The vision is to make it even more international and to have a bigger digital reach,” he said. “The numbers on-site are limited. Even if we put one more hall or two more halls in, it might be not 350,000, but 400,000. But then you have to take care that it still feels nice and not too full. So that’s not the growth KPI.
“We have seen tremendous growth in the awareness worldwide for Gamescom, in terms of digital visitors, co-streamers and partners. That’s an area where we can definitely grow.”
In addition, Gamescom is seeing increased interest from companies operating on the fringes of the video game industry.
“It’s interesting to see non-endemic exhibitors, like streaming companies such as Netflix, who want to be involved in Gamescom. We need to take care that it’s still a gaming event. We need to find the right partners that are the right match, so where there’s connecting ecosystems and cultures. Games is the greatest force of pop culture, and you’ll see that represented at Gamescom. You will see partners like Paramount, Disney, and Netflix. They’re part of gaming culture as you can how much content of Netflix is actually games content.”
He continued: “I always say that if you lead a market, and we’re delighted that Gamescom is the biggest event worldwide, then you need to lead it. We push for new developments and things you can do. That’s our responsibility for the coming years.”
Gamescom 2025 has seen some marginal growth this year. The firm has announced it has over 1,500 exhibitors this year, a rise of 40 over the year before. It has also seen the number of participating countries increase from 64 to 72.
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More European gamers are spending money, but they’re spending less
The latest data from Ampere shows an increase in the number of European gamers spending money on new titles, in-game microtransactions and subscription services. However, on average, gamers are spending less money.
According to its panel, the data firm says that 43% of gamers in Western Europe (aged 13 to 64) purchased a new game in the last six months, that’s up from 39% in 2024.
Meanwhile, the share of gamers who spend money on in-game goods (including currency and cosmetics) has risen from 34% in 2024 to 40% in 2025.
And there’s been a sharp growth in subscribers. Ampere found that more gamers are subscribing to various services, rising from 27% of respondents in 2024 to 36% in 2025.
Ampere says that this growth is likely the result of more casual gamers playing, as the average spend per gamer has actually fallen by 17%.
Speaking to The Game Business, Ampere’s senior research analyst for games Louise Wooldridge said: “Something we’ve seen this year is higher spending on mid-size and indie games, so things like Expedition 33, which obviously did incredibly, well, indie games like REPO, Schedule 1, Peak… they all had a stand-out year this year. And that’s probably linked to the macro-economic situation. Of course, they are really good games in their own right.”
The Game Business takes on Gamescom
The Game Business will be in Cologne next week for the 2025 Gamescom show, and we’ve a bumper week of coverage planned.
This includes an extra Wednesday version of our Show and Newsletter (so three Shows next week), plus a whole load of post-event coverage.
Also on the Wednesday, we are hosting a live version of The Game Business Show on the future of announcing and promoting video games, featuring a whole variety of media, marketing and PR veterans, including former Eurogamer boss Rupert Loman (now at Just), Indigo Pearl founder Caroline Miller, CD Projekt’s VP of public relations Michal Platkow-Gilewski and studio head of ICHI Woldwide Samantha Lester. The session takes place as part of The Keywords Studios Supercharged Summit. For those not in attendance, we are recording the session for release the week after Gamescom.
Our Gamescom coverage has been sponsored by Green Man Gaming and Keywords Studios. We are also part of the Gamescom Ambassador program.
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Meanwhile…
Square Enix posted a 55% drop in profit for its financial year Q1. It also reported a 25% drop in revenue for its Digital Entertainment business due to weaker sales of new games. The firm had a stronger slate of titles during Q1 2024.
By contrast, Bandai Namco delivered a strong Q1 with sales up 7%. This is on the back of a 81% sales boost for its Mobile Suit Gundam IP. Elden Ring Nightreign also did well for the group, with five million copies shipped
A lack of new games took its toll on Sega’s Q1 figures. The Sonic publisher saw sales drop nearly 23% to $548 million. The firm’s ‘Entertainment Contents’ segment saw a 6.7% drop in net sales, with income down 39%. But in most positive news, Persona 5: The Phantom X has exceeded expectations, with 1.5 million downloads.
The Battlefield 6 beta delivered impressive player numbers. The upcoming EA shooter attracted 520,000 concurrent players on Steam, which for context is ahead of the 490,000 peak achieved by Call of Duty HQ (which includes all Call of Duty titles). The success prompted former Blizzard exec Mike Ybarra to post on Twitter that Battlefield “will boot stomp CoD this year”. He added that this will be good news as “CoD won't be lazy anymore, and we'll all get better FPS games for it." We talk about this on today’s Show.
Fortnite is returning to iOS in Australia after a court found that both Apple and Google had abused “their control over app distribution and in-app payments to limit competition”. Epic called it a win for developers and consumers, but the court did reject the accusation that Apple had breached consumer law.
Steel City Interactive, the developer behind the smash hit boxing game Undisputed, has opened a new office in Leamington Spa (one of the more popular locations for game studios in the UK). The developer has also added five new leaders to its business, including head of marketing and communications Alison Beasley, head of technology Sylvain Cornillon, head of art Nathan Fisher, head of QA Todd Matherne and head of people and culture Anna Lapworth.
Another UK studio, 4J - famous for the Minecraft console ports, and currently working on Minecraft rival Reforj – has opened a new office in Edinburgh.
IGN’s senior vice president and publisher John Davison has left the firm. The news follows a challenging year for the media giant, which has seen numerous departures and redundancies over the past 12 months.
That’s it for today’s edition of The Game Business Newsletter. We will be back on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week, as we report from the Gamescom show floor in Cologne. Thank you for reading.
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