Gamescom Has Become The New E3 For The Video Game Industry

With the death of E3 last year, Gamescom in Germany has become the default conference for the entire video game industry (outside of China) for launching new games and hardware. My first visit to Gamescom happened to come in the same year as the last E3 conference, and it was mind-blowing to see how big Gamescom has become compared to what E3 used to be. For understandable reasons, Gamescom has traditionally had a more European and PC-centric approach.

Because Gamescom is the new “it” show for the game industry, it’s no surprise that we saw many new hardware announcements at this year’s show in late August. For some reason, this year’s Gamescom announcements were very monitor-heavy, so that’s what we’ll lead with.

Nvidia And MediaTek Partner On Monitor Scalers

Let’s start with the tech that drives the monitors. One of the most significant barriers to Nvidia G-Sync’s variable refresh rate technology since its inception (I was at that launch in Montreal in 2013) was the cost of the G-Sync module, which powered the gaming experience. This extra G-Sync module replaced traditional monitor scalers to enable G-Sync before adaptive refresh became a standard feature across all gaming scalers. With the growth of adaptive refresh, Nvidia has added more capabilities to G-Sync to differentiate it from adaptive refresh, keeping monitor costs high for the G-Sync Pulsar technology it announced earlier this year.

However, Nvidia also has a long-standing partnership with MediaTek for automotive chips, which has brought the two companies closer together. At Gamescom this year, Nvidia and MediaTek announced that they would be working to bring G-Sync Pulsar to MediaTek’s monitor scaler chips. This is relevant because MediaTek’s scalers are already in millions of monitors worldwide, much like its TV scalers, which enjoy 70% market share. Working with MediaTek to integrate G-Sync Pulsar into its scalers means that Nvidia won’t need to add a G-Sync module anymore, and the scaler will be enough to enable all G-Sync features.

Admittedly, these will still be high-end scalers from MediaTek, but they will be considerably cheaper than a G-Sync module, which has traditionally added $150 to the cost of most monitors. However, these new monitors will support 1440P resolution at 360 hertz with HDR. They will initially be found in one monitor apiece from three OEMs: ASUS, Acer and AOC. While nobody has given specifics on cost yet, ASUS is saying it will ship its monitor in Q4 of this year, which is likely when we’ll see retail pricing for these monitors.

This may not be the only area for MediaTek and Nvidia’s partnership, as rumors continue to swirl around an AI PC link-up as well. This could make sense, given that MediaTek is seemingly becoming Nvidia’s preferred partner for consumer technologies.

Samsung’s New Odyssey 3D Monitor

Samsung has long been pushing the envelope with its monitor technologies. I was a big fan and user of its Odyssey G9 line of gaming monitors, even with all the bugs I had to deal with. The new Odyssey 3D monitor is the company’s first foray into 3-D gaming monitors, with 27-inch and 37-inch sizes coming later this year. These will feature 4K QLED panels with 165-hertz refresh rates and support for AMD FreeSync, with ports for both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (not 2.0).

The important thing about these monitors is that they deliver a very high-quality glasses-free 3-D experience. I have a strong feeling that they might be leveraging some of Leia’s Light Field Display technology to achieve this. Last year, Leia acquired Dimenco, the leading 3-D monitor manufacturer, and followed that later in 2023 by purchasing Phillips 3-D display IP. If my experience with Leia 3-D technology is any indication, this monitor is going to be one of the best 3-D displays on the market. This monitor was teased at CES 2024, but was officially announced at Gamescom 2024, even though there is no word on pricing. I’m glad to see Samsung entering this space.

AMD X870 Boards

Gamescom also served as a great platform for AMD’s motherboard partners to launch their X870 boards, which will pair with the latest AM5-based Zen 5 CPUs in the Ryzen 9000 series. AMD’s X870 series marks the first time that there won’t be any difference in storage or memory support between the X870 base model and the X870E, although there will still be a difference in quantity of connectivity and bandwidth. At Gamescom, ASUS took the opportunity to announce both its X870 and X870E boards, which include:

• ROG Crosshair X870E Hero
• ROG STRIX X870E-E/F/A/I gaming Wi-Fi
• TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wi-Fi
• ProArt X870E-Creator Wi-Fi
• Prime X870-P, with and without Wi-Fi

That equates to a lineup of about nine different X870E boards, ranging from mainstream gaming to extreme high-end boards. What I find interesting is that most of these boards come standard with Wi-Fi 7 thanks to AMD’s partnership with MediaTek. These all come with either the MT7927 or the MT7925 components from MediaTek, which are known as the Filogic 380 and 360. As someone who recently transitioned my entire network to Wi-Fi 7, I welcome this move by ASUS and AMD and wish my current machines had this capability.

Zotac Zone PC Handheld

Zotac has apparently gotten FOMO after seeing ASUS, Lenovo, MSI, Valve and others launch gaming handheld PCs. At Gamescom, the company officially launched its own gaming handheld, called the Zotac Gaming Zone Handheld Console, which it originally showed off at the Computex show in the summer. Unsurprisingly, this device is powered by AMD’s Ryzen 8840U processor; this is a slight deviation from the competition, which has mostly used its very close cousin, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor. Most PC gaming handhelds use some variation of AMD’s 8040/Z1 series chips today. This is paired with 16GB of RAM, which should be standard for any gaming PC nowadays. The display is a 7-inch 120-hertz Amoled display with 10-point multitouch and 800 nits of brightness, which will come in handy for outdoor use.

Zotac also smartly put a USB-4 Type-C connector at the bottom for proper docking, and it offers a very nice-looking optional dock. Storage comes in the form of a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD in a 2280 form factor, so you can easily upgrade the SSD to a larger capacity without needing to find a special 2230-sized SSD. A microSD card slot also supports UHS-II speeds if you don’t need super-fast SSDs. Zotac is pricing the Gaming Zone at a somewhat expensive $799, which puts it at the higher end of the gaming handheld lineup. I am a little surprised at this, given that the device is using what is now an outdated chip, but we have yet to see any gaming handhelds launch with a Ryzen AI processor.

HP Omen Customizable PC And Google Play Games

HP’s Omen 35L is a fully customizable desktop gaming PC that uses all industry-standard components, so the user can easily service any parts that need replacement. Interestingly, HP has opted to cap the 35L configuration at the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Intel Core i7-14700F on the CPU side. Meanwhile, on the GPU side, HP supports up to an Nvidia RTX 4090, which seems misbalanced with the CPU offerings. The CPU offerings might be capped by the 240mm liquid cooling system, which is probably the biggest radiator in the 35L chassis. HP also offers a modular 850-watt or 1,000-watt power supply for the system.

This PC is designed to grow with the gamer’s needs, for example by allowing for minimal cabling based on the configuration. Having fewer cables means better airflow, and better airflow means better thermals, which translates to better performance and lower noise. Not all changes are hardware-related for the new Omen 35L, as HP has also updated the OMEN Gaming Hub to add Google Play Games on PC. This expands gamers’ access to mobile and PC games and will allow users to experience all types of gaming from one place.

Gamescom Continues To Grow

In addition to the slew of hardware announcements, there were also a ton of game updates and announcements at the show, as you’d expect. I’m sure gamers will have fun playing new games like Black Myth: Wukong, which launched at Gamescom and is already getting tons of critical acclaim—in addition to supporting all of Nvidia’s latest graphical features.

For the PC hardware industry to successfully sell its many new monitors and desktops, there need to be good games that drive people to buy new hardware. While E3 was more focused on consoles, Gamescom is definitely a more PC-centric show. That said, I suspect we might see more console games being promoted at Gamescom as it becomes the premier game conference. We already got a glimpse of that with Microsoft’s confirmation that Indiana Jones is coming to PS5 after its Xbox debut and Meta showing off Batman: Arkham Shadow for Quest 3, which is certain to be a huge driver of headset sales.