According to a statement given to German gaming outlet, Games Wirtschaft, Nintendo has confirmed that it won’t be attending this year’s Gamescom event in Cologne.
The outlet was told by a spokeperson (via machine translation), “Gamescom is a central event in Nintendo’s event calendar. This year, however, after careful consideration, we decided against taking part in Cologne. Instead, players can try out games for Nintendo Switch as part of other Germany-wide events.”
If accurate, it leaves a pretty major gap in this year’s Gamescom activities as Nintendo has traditionally been a favourite among the exhibitors. It also comes after the company was allegedly showing off its new “Switch 2” hardware behind closed doors at last year’s show, a secret display that was subsequently widely reported on after word got out.
While it’s probably not the case that those rumours have scared Nintendo away from exhibiting altogether, a focus on its next-generation hardware and a relative dearth of recent heavy-hitter titles are probably pretty big contributors in a decision to forgo this year’s expo.
"(…) haben wir uns nach sorgfältiger Abwägung gegen eine Teilnahme in Köln entschieden": Nintendo @NintendoDE ist nicht auf der #Gamescom 2024 vertreten.https://t.co/FDhKdNl72X
— GamesWirtschaft (@gameswirtschaft) April 15, 2024
Although Nintendo’s successor to the Switch console had widely been expected to hit shelves this year, recent reports from multiple outlets – and citing multiple sources – have claimed that the Switch 2 (or whatever it’ll eventually be called) has since slipped into an early 2025 release instead.
Of course, without any official word from Nintendo themselves we really don’t know anything of substance about what its future hardware plans are.
The closest we’ve come to a genuine update on the hardware front is a quote from Nintendo of America’s president, Doug Bowser, saying, “Our goal is to minimise the dip you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another. I can’t speak to the possible features of a new platform, but the Nintendo Account is a strong basis for having that communication as we make the transition.”
