British computer trade shows... dropping like flies!

CMP, a big trade show organizer have pulled out of the UK market.

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You've probably never heard of CMP, but they're the guys who handle events like SCoRE (a retailers computer show), GDCE (Game Developers Conference Europe) and ECTS... but no more. With CMP pulling out of the market, none of these shows are going to happen leaving us with only the ELSPA run EGN and the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival for specialist shows in the UK.

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Is this the start of the end for UK based gaming development?

As an IT professional and with extensive experience in IT Marketing I'm not at all surprised that another player has pulled out.

It is a fact that since Y2k the IT industry has seen the Internet become the dominant and primary driving force for marketing purposes - exhibition events are horrendously expensive and to justify the cost are expected to generate sales leads. Exhibitions don't generate enough sales activity to justify the expense, simple.

I have attended perhaps 20 major shows over the last 5 years, each successive show is smaller than the last (most of the attendees are either other exhibitors staff or competitors and the inevitable 'consultants') and thus one by one they fold. For non-tangible products like software the exhibition business is all but over - the Internet and web based marketing has won the day.

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Originally Posted by Nick

Is this the start of the end for UK based gaming development?

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Nah...They will all go to near death and then EA will buy them all and after this we can look forward to such titles as Wipeout World Cup edition 2009 Hyper edition and Spyro the dragon street and various other titles :)

Worthy, that's true, but look at shows such as CeBIT, why ins't there anything like that happening in this country?

And end user shows would do fabulously well, Game Stars was packed on each of the days I went, so it's not due to lack of interest on the end user's part.

Perhaps the trade should think about it opening the doors and letting Jo Public back in, then they'd see some return on their investment.

Wild, yep, its the sad way of things that sequels and franchises are safe bets to recoup the outlay of development. Games are now big money to produce with hefty rewards if succesful, but to make serious money, they need to have mass market appeal. Hence the reason why the Sims is regurgitated in a new form every six months...