Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 28, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Games Convention (GC) 2006 games trade show in Leipzig ended on Sunday evening with a visitor record: With 183,000 visitors, almost 50,000 more people interested in games came to the Leipzig exhibition grounds during the four days than in the previous year, the organisers report. “The GC has proven in the public, media and business sectors alike that it is the clear number 1 in Europe and is thus one of the world’s leading events in the industry,” sums up Josef Rahmen, managing director of Leipziger Messe GmbH.
The organisers assume that the visitor crowds can also be attributed to the expansion of the target group. “The exhibitors’ expanded offerings for the older and female target groups as well as the expansion of GC family and the new ‘GC Art’ area have led to more visitors coming across generations,” states project director Angela Schierholz. “The GC as a trade show has thus fulfilled one of its most important tasks and shown that the subjects of interactive entertainment and education are a subject for society as a whole.”
Leipzig Trade Fair bases this on surveys by the IM Institute for Market Research. According to these, 42 percent of visitors were over 20 years old. That is six percent more than last year. 17 percent of visitors were female (+ 4 percent). 90 percent of all visitors want to return. 39 percent of visitors had a journey of more than 300 kilometres (2005: 31 percent).
91 percent of the total of 368 exhibitors from 25 countries announced their participation in GC 2007 in Leipzig even before the end of the trade show. 89 percent of exhibitors considered their trade-show objectives very well and well achieved (2005: 86 percent). Important providers such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo assessed their trade-show presence positively. “The record number of visitors shows once again that the GC has developed into the most important European event for interactive entertainment,” explains Uwe Bassendowski, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Germany.
