GamesCom Roundup

GamesCom in Cologne Germany is fast becoming a premiere event for the gaming industry and this week was truely a testament to that statement as there was some pretty big news – in particular out of the Sony Camp. Here’s a quick rundown of some things that went down.

Microsoft:

Showed off Kinect and announced that it was releasing across Europe on November 10th, Halo Reach was obviously on display and more details were released as they showed off a new video conveying more background about Nobel Teams story, Lionshead talked about Fable 3 blurring the lines of morality and some details about Age of Empires Online. Overall a rather drab and ho-hum showing from Microsoft.

EA

Came out hard and fast wasting no time showing off the new Harry Potter game with the help of the Weasley twins using Kinect and coop play

• FIFA 11 is shown off to be the bigest and best version yet (boooooring)
• Mass Effect 2 coming to PS3 (many fanboys crap themselves with excitement),
• Dragon Age 2 was displayed with an AWESOME video and release date of March 8th in USA – March 11 in the UK(man have they ever upped the ante in the graphics department
• EA Sports Active 2 is official across all platforms with David Beckham revealed to be face of the title
• The newest Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit gets a limited edition with exclusive vehicles se of which are only exclusive to the collectors edition
• Crysis 2 gets 2 new versions (very limited and only available for pre-order); The Limited (includes 4 in game multiplayer unlocks)and Nano editions (includes a steel case and a statue of the games hero standing on a cab, art book and all packaged in a recreation of the backback the hero sports) and the multiplayer Beta is exclusive to the Xbox 360 this year
• They also showed off more Dead Space 2; The game is shaping up really nicely but I just couldn’t get into the original
• Also, The Sims will be released on consoles this fall and a new standalone game is coming next year called The Sime Medieval

Sony

• The announcement of a new 320GB Move bundle and 160GB model to replace the current 120 system
• Virtua Tennis 4 announced with ful Move support
• Insomniac announced Ratchet and Clank; All 4 One (booooring)

• New trailer for Infamous 2

• LittleBigPlanet 2 video shows off the new tools

• and finally, Resistance 3 is revealed though not much else is talked about for this title so one can only assume it’s still quite early in development.