Gamescom is nearly upon us. The massive games show -- Europe's iteration of E3, as it were -- attracted nearly 350,000 attendees in 2013, and 2014 promises to be just as big, if not bigger. Indeed, Gamescom is starting to rival E3 in terms of stature and importance, something I witnessed firsthand when I attended the show in 2011 and 2013.

Between those two years, not only did the show grow in size demonstrably, but so did Sony's press conference, going from a room housing a couple hundred people in 2011 to a much bigger, E3-like presence two years later. Sony is the biggest publisher at Gamescom, and Europeans are taking to PlayStation 4 in particular. So we can certainly expect some pretty cool announcements at the PlayStation press conference, right?

Below are five predictions for Sony's press conference, slated to take place on Tuesday, August 12th.



1.) Until Dawn is Basically A Lock

Sony has so far released two videos -- one here and another here -- that, to me, are clearly teasing Until Dawn's re-reveal at Gamescom. What's Until Dawn, you ask? It's a long-in-development PlayStation-exclusive horror game originally scheduled to come to PlayStation 3. Hell, I saw the game running with my own two eyes at New York Comic Con way back in 2012, as someone from developer Supermassive moved through a section of the game using PlayStation Move.
Sony Gamescom 2014 Trailer #2 - It's Coming
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Following Until Dawn's trademark leak right before Gamescom in 2012, the game was officially revealed a week later. The studio working on the game confirmed to IGN that it was still in development as of May, 2013, and Shuhei Yoshida himself admitted it would be a good fit for Project Morpheus, Sony's in-development PS4 VR headset.

So, you can pretty much lock this one in as far as I'm concerned. Until Dawn will be re-revealed, it's now a PlayStation 4 game (sorry PS3!), and it'll launch in 2015. If you need any more evidence, simply consult Until Dawn's trademark renewal or the fact that the game appeared on Gamescom's website.



2.) Journey and The Unfinished Swan Revealed For PS4 (and Maybe Vita)

Like the aforementioned Until Dawn, Journey and The Unfinished Swan are almost certainly coming to PlayStation 4. The same Sony-centric Gamescom website that outed Until Dawn's appearance at the show also outed these two ports, which were marked for release on PS4. But it goes even deeper than that, considering the Korean Game Ratings Board accidentally revealed The Unfinished Swan for PS4 and Vita. In other words, the evidence is pretty overwhelming.
Journey Video Review
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Do these games need to come to PlayStation 4? Not really. In fact, the PS3-to-PS4 ports are getting borderline lame at this point (with the exception of The Last of Us: Remastered, which is required gaming). Still, Sony hasn't been porting just any game from PS3 to PS4. Sound Shapes, Flower, Flow, and Escape Plan (the latter technically being a Vita game) all made the migration very early in PS4's lifecycle, so Journey and The Unfinished Swan -- arguably the best games of that bunch -- certainly belong in that esteemed group. I just wish Sony would come out with some new, bite-sized titles like these, instead of relying on their legacy. But I digress.

If you haven't played Journey or The Unfinished Swan, by the way, you're totally missing out. Journey is an astounding and emotional game, and it won IGN's 2012 Game of the Year Award as a result. As for The Unfinished Swan? It was nominated for that same award and and lost, but it's fantastic in its own right.



3.) Shahid Takes the Stage

Anyone who's immersed in the PlayStation ecosystem knows exactly who Shahid Ahmad is. Indeed, he's a bit of a folk hero with the PlayStation faithful, especially Vita loyalists hungry for new content. He works for Sony over in London as a Strategic Content Planner. In other words, his job is to get games to come to PlayStation platforms, and frankly, he's done a really nice job so far (even if a lot of people get frustrated with some of his Twitter teases).
Sony Press Conference Reactions - Gamescom 2013
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I was at Gamescom in 2013 when Ahmad triumphantly took the stage to reveal a litany of new games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. At Eurogamer Expo a month later*, he literally threw money at the screen in a sign of solidarity with gamers who plead with Sony to just take their money already. So, I'd fully expect that he takes the stage again this year -- starting a little tradition in the process -- to reveal a new slew of indie games, solidifying Sony's already ridiculously strong indie lineup.

What will he reveal? That's another story entirely. The indie landscape is vast and wide -- especially on PC -- so chances are we may have never heard of some of the games that are going to be revealed. Perhaps they're off our radar completely. But revealed they will be, bolstering Sony's lineup that's strong on smaller downloadable titles and indie games, but quite weak when it comes to retail titles, especially exclusives from the first party. Which reminds me…



4.) Media Molecule or Guerrilla Games Will Reveal A PS4 Game (But Not Both)

The reason a lot of people are so frustrated with the lack of major, triple-A first party exclusives on PlayStation 4 is simply because Sony commands a massive stable of fully-owned studios, perhaps the best group of one platform developers in the entire world. Yet, a lot of them have been pretty quiet. Guerrilla released Killzone: Shadow Fall at PS4's launch, as did Japan Studio with Knack. Several months later, Sucker Punch dropped Infamous: Second Son, and Sony San Diego joined the fray with MLB 14: The Show. But that's it.
Media Molecule Embraces Its Mistakes
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Worse yet, the immediate future is looking pretty dire. Driveclub, after an extraordinary year-long delay, will come to PS4 by way of Evolution Studios (remember, Driveclub was originally supposed to be a launch game). And in early 2015, we get The Order: 1886, a game that was also delayed (and rightfully so), but also a game that's not technically from a first party studio. Later in 2015, we get the eagerly-awaited Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. That leaves Polyphony Digital, Sony Bend, Sony Santa Monica, Media Molecule, Guerrilla Games, and others silent. We know they're working on PS4 games, we just don't know what.

Something tells me the silence will be broken by Media Molecule or Guerrilla Games, but probably not both. Guerrilla Games may strike you as a weird choice, since Killzone: Shadow Fall just launched, but they have multiple teams and have been working on a new IP for years, possibly an open-world RPG. Media Molecule, on the other hand? They don't want to do LittleBigPlanet anymore. With LittleBigPlanet 3 under development at Sumo Digital, a majority of the studio has been focusing on a PS4 project first shown at the PS4 reveal while a smaller team made Tearaway for Vita. The studio recently teased the game in a self-deprecating sort of way. We have to be close, right?



5.) A Minecraft PS4 and/or Vita Bundle Will Be Revealed

This seems like a no-brainer, right? It was at Gamescom in 2013 when Minecraft for PlayStation was revealed, but in the year since, Minecraft has only come to PS3, where it quickly sold over a million copies in very little time. The release of Minecraft on PS4 and Vita is probably imminent, and we know that both games are getting retail releases in addition to digital, which is a smart, smart move. But do you know what would be smarter? Making Minecraft bundles for both PS4 and Vita.
Minecraft PS3 Review
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Minecraft is arguably the biggest game in the world. It seems that everywhere you look, someone is playing it, someone is talking about it, someone is obsessed with it. It's a game that enraptures people, and for many, it's the only game they play. The fact that the PS3 iteration managed to sell over a million copies so extremely late to the game is a promising sign that the market isn't totally saturated yet (or that people are double-dipping), so imagine the possibilities of bundling Minecraft with hardware.

Indeed, Minecraft may prove to be PlayStation Vita's salvation in particular. PlayStation 4 doesn't exactly need help to sell, but Vita? It needs all of the help it can get. More people need to understand just how great Sony's fledgling handheld is, and putting it together with Minecraft is bound to get it in lots of people's hands, especially those who might not in the PlayStation ecosystem already. Sony definitely needs to consider this, if they haven't already.