Microsoft withdraws Gamescom press conference, will host external fan event instead

Microsoft has announced it will be holding an Xbox fan event in the midst of the Gamescom 2016 conference, rather than moving forward with its usual press briefing. The new event will allow fans to get some hands-on time with a number of the Xbox One’s most anticipated future releases.

The fan event itself will be open from August 18-24 as a part of the Gamescom conference, held annually in Cologne, Germany. The Xbox event opens the doors on games like ReCoreHalo Wars 2Sea of Thieves and Gears of War 4. All of these titles were shown off during the Xbox media briefing at E3 2016 in Los Angeles last month.

Indeed, Microsoft have pointed to their many significant announcements at E3 this year as the reason for dropping their Gamescom press conference — between all the new Xbox One hardware announcements, release dates and fresh gameplay footage, Microsoft says they simply don’t have anything else to talk about yet.

Their decision to switch things up does mark a departure from last year’s Gamescom conference that saw Xbox rule the show due to Sony’s skipping their media briefing. Sony gave Gamescom a miss in order to pour more announcements into PlayStation Paris Games Week, which was held in late October last year.

While Microsoft seems to have their plans for Gamescom 2016 sorted out, Sony still have not made any announcements regarding their presence at this year’s show.

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David Smith

David Smith is the former games and technology editor at The AU Review. He has previously written for PC World Australia. You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords.