Tag Archives: leipzig

Next year’s Games Convention Online will take place from July 8-11, 2010, Develop reports. Last year’s show attracted 43,000 visitors.

Remember, this is the bastard child of the once mighty Leipzig Games Convention, and now focusses, rather obviously, on online gaming.

The main German – and European – show is now Gamescom in Cologne. As you know. Unless you’ve been blind for the past year. Gamescom’s been confirmed for August 18-22 in 2010.

We’ll stop now.

We’re in Leipzig. We suffered the train with no air conditioning from Berlin. We gesticulated wildly to make a nice German lady understand that we wanted a return ticket to the Messe. We’re stealing Games Convention’s free wireless as we type. It’s all happening.

Games Convention 2008 kicks off properly tomorrow morning with the EA press conference at 9.00am CET. That’s 8.00am BST, if you’re in the UK. The biggie tomorrow is the Sony conference at 5.00pm CET. You can read timings for everything that’s going on tomorrow here. Below is listed everything we’ll going to (try to) live blog. All times are CET.

• 9.00am – EA press conference
• 10.00am – Konami press conference
• 11.00am – Ubisoft press conference
• 2.00pm – Activision press conference
• 5.00pm – Sony press conference

We’ve got meetings tomorrow as well, so some of this might not happen, but we’ll do our damndest.

After the press day tomorrow, the consumer show itself starts, and we’re back to back with games viewings and interviews all day. The show’s massive this year, so keep it locked this week for everything GC.

Right. Coffee action.

1UP has published loads of pictures from inside the Games Convention in Leipzig.

As the event doesn’t start until tomorrow, it’s a little empty at the moment, but hopefully you can imagine the awesome that will unfold from tomorrow morning.

Remember, videogaming247.com will be a veritable news-a-thon tomorrow from 9am CET, so make sure you don’t miss any of it.

By Mike Bowden

GI has announced that it will be the exclusive media partner for Games Convention Developer Conference in Leipzig.

“We are glad to have found such a renowned partner with GamesIndustry.biz. For us, the cooperation has a lot of potential, particularly with regard to the GCDC Daily”, said Frank Sliwka, GCDC project director.

The deal will see the GI editorial team the co-produce the GCDC Daily conference magazine.

“Once again we’re really looking forward to another great conference in Leipzig,” added Phil Elliott, editor of GamesIndustry.biz. “The conference has been steadily improving over the last few years and is today’s most important event for game developers all across Europe – we’re delighted to be working more closely than ever with the team.”

Hand shakes and back-patting all round.

By Mike Bowden

Leipziger Messe put out a press release this morning claiming Games Convention this year is going to break all previous records, saying the company registration is well up on last year.

“With considerably more than 500 exhibitors (2007: 503 exhibitors), the fair organisers expect another record,” said the firm. “Interest is particularly strong among international game publishers and developers.”

The show runs from August 21-24 this year, potentially the last in Leipzig. The German gaming “authorities” have launched a new event – GAMESCom – which will be held in Cologne for the first time next year.

Leipziger Messe has already confirmed that it will hold a Games Convention event in Leipzig in 2009.

Press release after the link.

More »

Games Convention owner Leipziger Messe has confirmed today that the show is still scheduled to happen in Leipzig in 2009. The news comes in the wake of an joint announcement from the BIU [Germany's answer to ELSPA or ESA - Ed] and Koelnmesse that a new event, GAMESCom, is to be held in Cologne in September next year.

It had been thought that the Games Convention IP may have been licensed to the new showground for a sizeable sum, but in essence the BIU hung Leipziger Messe out to dry, dragging Germany’s main show to a new location and refusing to take any tie of the Games Convention brand with it. On the surface, this leaves Leipziger Messe, owner of the biggest games show in the world, with nothing after building up an annual audience of almost 200,000.

Leipziger Messe, obviously, isn’t entirely pleased about the events of the last 24 hours, saying it is disappointed with the decision and today telling Eurogamer.de that it doesn’t believe the BIU understands the concept of Games Convention or its sister trade event GCDC.

Games Convention 2009 is, therefore, on. Whether or not the BIU has just made the biggest booboo in European gaming history remains to be seen.

Breaking news from the Leipzig press conference. Leipziger Messe has just confirmed that Games Convention as we know it is no more, and that the event has been moved to Cologne for 2009. Its new name is GAMESCom.

Update: Eurogamer.de’s just published this. The new show is being moved from August to September. Better travel links and 80,000 hotel places in the Cologne area are being mooted as the main reasons for the move. Both the German TV station RTL and the 2009 World Cyber Games are based in Cologne. The organisers have said the new show will work closely with both.

Following heavy speculation that Games Convention was to move to Cologne from Leipzig, German newspaper the FAZ has reported that the move is in fact correct, and that the new name for the show is Games Con.

“That report’s not official,” said a senior German source. “FAZ seems to know something, the local paper in Leipzig seems to know something. One is saying it’s called Games Con, another is saying it’s called Games Com. I’ve seen reports saying it’s called Games.com. Isn’t Games.com owned by AOL? It’s bullshit. We’ll know for certain what’s going on at the press conference on Monday morning.”

Leipziger Messe has confirmed that a press conference will be held in Leipzig on Monday at 10am CET.

Games Convention as an IP is owned by Leipziger Messe. FAZ had previously reported that the show was to be moved from Leipzig to Cologne for its 2009 show, and would likely have to have its name changed for legal reasons. Another option for the move, said the report, was for the Messe to license the IP to a new events company in Cologne for €450,000 for three years.

We’ll know on Monday, German games show fans.

A senior German industry source has told VG247 that he is “99 percent sure” that today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) speculation report that 2009′s Games Convention will be held in Cologne is correct.

The story said that Games Convention is to move to Cologne next year, but may undergo a name change. It also said that there is talk of Leipziger Messe, the owner of the Games Convention IP, licensing the property to another firm for €450,000 for three years.

“I’m 99 percent sure it’s true,” said the source. “It’s the only way to make it truly international, because of flight connections, and so on. There’s Cologne airport, Bonn airport and Düsseldorf is next door. Then you have the big boys, EA and Ubisoft, in Cologne and Düsseldorf. It all makes sense.”

He went on, explaining that the FAZ is a highly regarded publication.

“The FAZ is one of the two most respected newspapers in Germany, and those details are pretty specific, to be honest,” he said. “It’s not a rumour newspaper. It’s a paper mainly for the financial community, based in Frankfurt, so I don’t expect them to write something they just heard somewhere.”

Talk of Games Convention moving from Leipzig is years old, mainly due to poor flight connections to the east German town and a lack of hotels close to the Messe. The source continued, saying that rumoured targets of doubling the show’s attendance could never be achieved in Leipzig.

“There have been so many rumours in the past,” he said. “To be fair, the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware [BIU, the German equivalent of ESA or ELSPA - Ed] is in control of it, but no one really mentions it, and EA is in Cologne. They might be the driving force behind it.

“There was talk of a target of an attendance of 400,000 people for Games Convention, and this can only be achieved in [the German state of] Nordrhein-Westfalen. So it can only be in Cologne, Essen, or wherever. It can’t be anywhere else, because that’s the state with the strongest population. They have 19 million people there.”

If the move is a reality, said the source, you’re going to know about it sooner rather than later.

“I don’t think there’s any way to confirm this further,” he said. “No one will comment on it. They’ll have to tell everyone soon if they are going to move it for 2009. It’s the biggest games show in the world, and it’s already February 2008.”

Rumour is now circulating that next week’s GDC may see an announcement regarding the location of next year’s show. This year’s Games Convention will be held as usual in Leipzig, running from August 20-24.

A move for Games Convention has been rumoured for at least the last three years, but the story entered a far more convincing stage today as it hit Germany’s mainstream press.

According to this report in German financial paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the show is to be moved from Leipzig in east Germany to Cologne in the west next year.

The report says that €450,000 in licensing may be paid to Leipziger Messe, the owner of the Games Convention brand, but that the show itself may also undergo a name change.

Games Convention is the largest games show in the world, attracting almost 200,000 visitors in 2007.

We’ll have more on this later today.

The Games Convention Developers Conference (GCDC) is asking for papers this morning and will be accepting proposals for this year’s event until April 30.

The trade conference runs alongside giant German expo Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, this year starting on August 20. Applicable topics include all the usual tradey stuff, such as “market insights, overviews, trends and introductions of new technologies as well as real world development knowledge.”

“Next to developers from Europe, we have addressed developers in North America. The new GCDC program will also address topics and trends of the Asian game industry,” said show boss Frank Sliwka.