Gamescom Show Opens With New 'Call of Duty', 'Lego Batman' Announcements
The games being previewed at the event showed relatively few surprises in an industry being battered by job losses and slow growth after the Covid-19 lockdowns ended.
New releases in the Call of Duty, Lego Batman and Honor of Kings franchises were showcased during the opening night of Europe’s biggest video game trade show as the industry grapples with job cuts and studio closures.
Microsoft Corp.’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will come out on Nov. 14, while Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is set for release in 2026, according to announcements at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany on Tuesday.
Microsoft’s Obsidian unit reiterated that Outer Worlds 2 will be coming Oct. 29, while a studio owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd. shared new details about Honor of Kings: World, a collaborative role-playing game based on the Honor of Kings title. Other games showcased included Silent Hill f, an upcoming survival horror game from Konami Group Corp., and Black Myth: Zhong Kui, a sequel to 2024’s Black Myth: Wukong.
The games being previewed at the event showed relatively few surprises in an industry being battered by job losses and slow growth after the Covid-19 lockdowns ended. Microsoft cut hundreds of jobs from its gaming unit this year and canceled several projects, part of a bigger effort to control costs.
Still, video-game sales are expected to climb 3.4% this year to $188.9 billion, according to forecaster Newzoo, finally surpassing the $184.6 billion peak during the pandemic year 2021, when players were locked up at home. Nintendo Co.’s Switch 2 device, its first new gaming system in eight years, is giving the industry a boost. Microsoft’s Xbox is also showing off a handheld device at Gamescom this week.
Events like the opening night showcase used to be a common feature in video-game marketing, but larger companies have increasingly preferred to debut games in their own dedicated social media streams. During his introduction, opening night host Geoff Keighley appeared to make reference to these shifting dynamics, declaring that Los Angeles’ E3 festival, once seen as a totemic event in the games industry, had “just moved right here to Germany.”
