Ask anyone at this year's gamescom and they will probably agree - this year's show feels a little different. There have been a couple of new announcements, sure, but much of the offering here in Cologne feels a little familiar, a tad reheated.
Most notable is the lack of Gamescom press conferences. Sony is completely absent once again. Microsoft is here, although its low-key press meetup consisted of Aaron Greenberg climbing onto a podium to announce a couple of Xbox One S bundles.
Nintendo has no new Direct broadcast, while third-party publishers such as Ubisoft and Activision are content with simply getting the games they revealed at E3 out into the hands of the 500,000 eager visitors.
The lack of new announcements does not come as a total surprise - Gamescom 2016 takes place in an odd moment in time: after E3's annual information blowout but still too early to include this autumn's big console reveals of PS4K and NX.
But it also feels indicative of a wider move away from publishers talking directly to press, and towards companies targeting the "influencer" stars of social media and the gaming public themselves.
Nowhere was this change of focus more evident than EA's Gamescom event, which was broadcast online but was decidedly not a press conference in the traditional sense. Many who tuned in were expecting more than what we actually got - a meandering stroll of a stream mostly focused on FIFA and Battlefield - and it's fair to say we weren't too impressed.
Fast forward less than 24 hours from the company's public pow-wow and I find myself sat opposite EA's very own Peter Moore. He had read our livetext - and, of course, it wasn't what anyone would want to hear about their own event. But to be fair to Peter, and as a preface to the below since the internet and nuance can be difficult friends - our subsequent chat remained jovial throughout, and he treated the matter all in good sport and good spirits.
