One of the problems with Tokyo Game Show 2009 is that the mid-September dates are just too close to the August Gamescom. If the TGS organizers, the CESA, were smart, they'd move the Japanese event to October like in 2008.
That's if they were smart.
The dates that are currently being tossed around for the 2010 TGS are either between September 16 and September 19 or September 17 and September 19 — the CESA still needs to iron out how many business and public days the 2010 event will have.
Germany's Gamescom 2010 will run between August 18 and 22.
Regardless, CESA is announcing that the event will happen in mid-September and doing so right on the heels of a show with falling attendance. Wouldn't it be smarter to move the show back a month to October in order to give publishers and developers a chance to breathe and bring new builds and announcements to TGS 2010? Isn't the CESA aware of what is happening elsewhere in the industry? Or even what is happening to the industry in Japan?
Because right now, the way CESA is scheduling TGS 2010, the organizing is in a way forcing game companies to chose between two shows: Gamescom and TGS. Compared to the Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom draws a bigger crowd of gamers (245,000 attended this year's event) and has a bigger reach as the show is far more international in scope than the Tokyo Game Show.
So if you were a game publisher, which one would you bring your latest builds and announcements to?