PSP World

Is Sony Preparing Major Announcement for GamesCom?

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) might be the largest event on the video game industry calendar, but it isn't the only one. Besides the Tokyo Game Show in September, there is a young upstart conference in Europe called GamesCom. This publicity extravaganza will happen in Cologne, Germany, so we can be sure that attendees will smell nice while they check out hundreds of booths from companies around the world. Interestingly, Sony has booked a massive 3-hour press conference for August 18th, the day before the conference kicks off for the general public. People are extremely curious about what Sony might reveal at this unlikely venue, especially since Microsoft and Nintendo have nowhere near the same presence on the GamesCom stage.

Traditionally, Europe has been a very stong market for Sony, so a mega announcement here does kind of make sense. Also, given the massive leaks that occurred just before E3, perhaps Sony wanted some time to prepare a proper announcement at a less frenetic event.

We think that there is a strong possiblity that Sony will finally take the wraps off of its rumored PS3 Slim. After all, we already learned about the PSP Go at E3, so the company wouldn't need 3 hours to talk about changes to its handheld gaming system. This would be a good time to announce a price cut for holiday 2009 as well, in case Sony was planning on dropping the price of its PS3 hardware.

Those two megaton announcements would be awesome, but hardly enough to fill a 3-hour conference. We're sure that Sony will showcase some of its upcoming titles in greater detail. We expect to get a closer look at MAG and The Agent, for example. There may even be some changes coming the Playstation Network or Home services, similarly to Microsoft's dashboard experience upgrade.

No matter what happens, one thing is certain: gamers now have a major mid-summer press event to look forward to.

Photos of a prototype for a PS3 Slim model were leaked out of a factory in China earlier this year.