Square-Enix at Gamescom 2010

After my 24h non-stop trip at the Gamescom in Cologne (Germany), I am back with some pictures of the Square-Enix booth. If you followed my live-blogging experiment that day, you will remember some of these pictures :)

The Square-Enix Booth
Square-Enix was located at hall 6, where all the big players showed their new games. I tried to get as much information as possible while at their location.

• Relatively small booth compared to the big name companies around them
• FFXIV Presentation with 12 PCs (Win7, keyboard + gamepad) as Main Event Place
• Two side-panels with other games (some mech-shooter and handhelds)
• Small area with collectible figures
• A small 18+ closed area where "Kayne and Lynch 2" was playable
• "theater" area for 50 people to show trailers (30min shows)

Location, Location, Location...
With all these huge booths from major selling companies, Square-Enix looked more like some small publisher who just had enough money to get such a top spot. How can you attract people to your game with all these big names, massive light-shows and cool gaming possibilities around you :(

Companies around Square-Enix:

• Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Diabolo 3)
• EA Games (Need for Speed, Fifa, Sims)
• 2K Games (Mafia 2, NBA)
• Activision (Call of Duty - Black Ops)

Playing FFXIV
You had to get a reservation time-card to get one of the few spots to actually play FFXIV.

• 30min time frames for 12 people in each turn
• A lot of garbage advertising speech before we could start
• Creating your own character, which was the main purpose of this "game play" panel
• Play the intro tutorial for your selected hometown

Your game time ended as soon as you reached the adventurer pub with the words from a Square Enix employee: "sorry, that's all we are allowed to show you for now". Actual playtime to test out the combat system - 2min. WTF?

The short game play was fun anyway because you could choose one of the three hometowns and not only Limsa Lominsa. I played the Gridania storyline (green forest) and it really looks fantastic and beautiful.

As a nice gimmick at the end of this presentation we were all given a little usb stick (1 GIG) with the FFXIV benchmark and your created character. Cool idea I think :)





FFXIV new Trailer
The "theater" had space for 50 visitors with a little presentation of their new FFXIV trailer, Game play examples and trailers for upcoming Square-Enix games like 3rd birthday. FFXIV was in a 2 hour main-event circle with Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dungeon Siege III.

I tried to get a release date for this trailer but a Square-Enix employee told me, they are not going to release it anytime soon but only show it at Gamescom. Well, I doubt that but I guess we have to wait for a leaked or officially released version. In fact the fan-kit folder structure names these pictures as "opening cutscene". So I guess we will see it with the release of FFXIV ;-)



To sum it up, it was a trailer about a human adventurer meeting up in the tavern with his friends. They are collecting guild leves to begin their journey. While deciding on the upcoming quest, the "hero" gets sucked into a dream of his own adventure.

Lots of combat action, group play, massive air battle against wyvern and destruction of an airship. We all know parts of this trailer from teasers and picture. Look at these and you get an impression.

Update: You can watch this trailer on the FFXIV Homepage now.






Figure Showcase
Some of these really look cool. But I couldn't find actual prices to buy them.





My summary

• Square-Enix wasn't really doing much at Gamescom
• No real press-kit, only some printed pages of the email press release
• No keynotes
• Little goodies: usb-stick, stickers and a mouse pad
• Was still nice to be able to watch the trailer and play the new intro-tutorial of Gridania

Calaelen is living and working online, gamer, blogger (German), web and software developer.