Third time's the charm right? After press-bombing twice and having the Xbox One fall on its face the two times it was showcased at the biggest events in gaming, Ballmer and crew at the micro 'M' are going for one and three, with a full blown press conference at this year's European-based tradeshow... GamesCom.
Despite coming in second place behind the PC Master Race at E3 this year -- even though that was a bit of a fluke given how many games were actually running on Windows 7 PCs with GTX cards -- Microsoft wants to prove that they're in it to win it and that the foot-shooting is done and over with... they promise.
Set to take place on August 21st, Gamespot and CVG are reporting that the big press event at GamesCom will be Microsoft's first. This huge press conference will be a big step up for the company, as opposed to just attending the event and having a booth on the show floor.
We all know what happened last time when Microsoft showed up to actually talk about the Xbox One at their May 21st reveal...
The move definitely speaks volumes about Microsoft's position in the console race, because in 2012 they completely skipped out on GamesCom. This means that Microsoft is feeling the burn and they're going to attempt to chill their own bum by unleashing some cool new details, trailers and information on the Xbox One... or at least, we can hope for that to be true.
According to a Microsoft representative...
"We're excited to be back at Gamescom this year but we're not announcing any further details on our plans at this time. Please stay tuned for more details!"
This also follows on Microsoft's commitment to the Xbox One by having their Japanese division attend the Tokyo Game Show later this year, bringing The One with them in a (futile) attempt to win over the Japanese gaming audience, something they weren't able to do with the original Xbox and the Xbox 360.
For GamesCom, however, I imagine that since Microsoft spent their original reveal talking television, sports and more television, and they spent E3 showing games back-to-back like they were going out of style, we can imagine that they'll probably fuse the two directions into one giant bulbous media explosion of epic proportions.
Given the way the pre-orders for the PS4 have been killing the Xbox One, with the OUYA even managing to outsell The One in Canada, Microsoft really needs a win at a press event if they hope to have a fighting chance this fall. We'll keep you posted on what their actual plans are for GamesCom 2013, which will run between August 21st to August 25th in Cologne, Germany.
