Who won Gamescom?

Was there even a winner? There was a competition on stage during Tuesday's conferences, that's for sure, even if it's hard to call it either way. The famous rivalry between the two companies was there for all to see, and it certainly was a spectacle.

For a start you had Microsoft giving Sony a bloody nose with the announcement of the exclusivity deal for Rise of the Tomb Raider. Sony might not have really cared at the end of the day, it's just one IP and it's only a timed deal that will one day, sooner or later, expire into our collective memories. However, there's plenty of gamers out there who love Lara and will miss her on PlayStation, and for them this week has been particularly painful.

There's been a lot of hate, with some even suggesting that it's unfair that MS are denying gamers the chance to play a previously multi-platform title, but I don't see that, all I see is a canny business decision by Spencer and his team. And, let's not forget that Sony pulled EXACTLY the same trick back in the day when they snapped up exclusivity over the same IP, effectively putting Sega and Nintendo on the back foot in the console wars of 90s. It's no different. It's just business.

On the other side of the great console divide there's Sony, who are being rightly praised for their forward-thinking attitude. The PlayStation brand is thriving, they've got what looks like an unassailable lead coming up to the one year anniversary of both new-gen consoles, and the future for PS4 looks assured. This Gamescom they focused on innovation and new horizons, most notably for me with the Share Play feature that they confirmed is coming later this year, and the slew of new announcements.

The praise currently being lavished on Sony must be a bitter pill for Microsoft to swallow. After all, it's this kind of future planning that they tried to announce the Xbox One with last year. Except then, gamers didn't want to hear it, and their plans for tomorrow (now today) were dismissed by a startling majority of gamers. Their mistake then, it would seem, wasn't thinking ahead, but rather talking about it too soon. It turns out that gamers didn't want the future given to them as complete package, but rather delivered in easy to swallow bites. Simply put, we weren't ready.

Microsoft dropped the ball when they announced Xbox One, and they're still paying for a series of catastrophically misjudged decisions. Sony, on the other hand, hardly deviated from the course set with PlayStation 3, and are only now introducing the kind of innovations that Microsoft were promising from the start but have since had to backtrack from following those early days of disaster. That manifested itself in this week's Gamescom, where one side is still busy scrambling to get leverage and claw themselves back from a disadvantageous position, and the other was able to look ahead from a position of strength and assuredness.

And that brings me back to my original question: who won Gamescom? Having written all that, I think I've made up my mind. Microsoft certainly landed the heaviest blow, but Sony had much more to offer. Perhaps Sony did come out on top after all, even if it didn't feel like that straight after watching the press conferences.

But even if Sony were the winners, the seeds of any victory were planted months and months ago, not in the days that preceded this year's event. That said, it's been an interesting week whichever way you look at it. We hope you enjoyed our coverage of the show, and if you agree or disagree with my assessment, feel free to say so in the comments section below.