Packed exhibition halls in Cologne are a given at Gamescom nowadays. Individuals’s leisure habits in Germany have modified markedly over the previous ten years and change into more and more digital.
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Immediately, 33 % of respondents within the newest so-called “Leisure Monitor” say they play video video games at the least as soon as per week. Solely smartphone actions and listening to music have seen even stronger development.
€9.4 billion in gross sales, EU commissioner and German president drop in
This 12 months’s Gamescom, which was anticipated to draw greater than 350,000 guests, is being held underneath the slogan “Video games whet the urge for food for the long run.” Henna Virkkunen, vice-president of the European Fee liable for digital applied sciences, can also be coming to Cologne to speak concerning the European Union’s technique on video games. The EU commissioner will meet Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil, Analysis Minister Dorothee Bar and North Rhine-Westphalia state premier Hendrik Wust.
Immediately, Frank-Walter Steinmeier will change into the primary German president ever to go to Gamescom, the place he’ll open the Gamescom congress.
In line with the 2026 annual report on Germany’s video games trade, income from video games, video games {hardware} and on-line gaming providers in Germany reached round €9.4 billion in 2025. That represents development of 4 % in contrast with the earlier 12 months. This makes Germany the biggest video games market in Europe and the fifth-largest worldwide.
Business representatives in Germany are correspondingly assured: “Because the world’s greatest video games occasion, Gamescom is as soon as once more making one factor abundantly clear this 12 months: we have to make much better use of the distinctive potential of video games and their cultural, financial and technological energy. It have to be Germany’s and Europe’s ambition to play a number one position as a manufacturing hub for video games,” mentioned Recreation managing director Felix Falk forward of the commerce truthful.
“To attain that, we want extra ambition, dependable political framework circumstances, proportionate regulation, and to faucet way more into the distinctive potential of video games for our society.”
Due to AI: chips have gotten costlier, and so are gaming units
But within the first half of 2026, trade income fell by 3 % to €4.2 billion, primarily as a result of {hardware} gross sales dropped by 8 %. Virtually all consoles, reminiscent of Nintendo’s Swap, Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation, have change into costlier in latest months due to rising costs for reminiscence and laborious drives. Europe is now banking on build up its personal chip manufacturing with a purpose to change into much less depending on China.
On the opening occasion in Cologne, Canadian online game skilled and host Geoff Keighley described the modifications within the trade as “thrilling on the one hand and alarming on the opposite”. He mentioned knowledge centres for synthetic intelligence (AI) wanted enormous numbers of chips, which had squeezed provide and pushed up the price of gaming know-how.
New releases at Gamescom embrace motion titles reminiscent of “Nodus Fall”, wherein the hero fights dragons, “Rainbow Six: Ways” that includes the navy technique of an elite soldier, one other instalment in Russian bestselling creator Dmitry Glukhovsky’s sport sequence, “Metro 2039”, in addition to the fantasy epic “Recreation of Thrones: Battle for Westeros”.
Considered one of Germany’s best-known gaming corporations is Giants Software program. The model with the cow on the quilt is now celebrating 5 million copies offered of “Farming Simulator 25”, a farming simulation sport launched on the finish of 2024. At Gamescom, Giants Software program is presenting the interactive premiere of “Farming Simulator 25: Beans & Alpacas”, which is due out in October.