Taking place on July 31 and August 1 in the former home of the once-massive Gamescon, the convention will focus on the online aspect of gaming.

Former CEO of SCEE David Reeves has signed on as a leading keynote speaker for the show, the conference announced.

Reeves’ talk is entitled “Schrodinger’s Cat and Heisenberg’s Dog – The Change from Offline to Online”. Reeves will explain what “everything online” means for the industry.

“At the GCO, I will provide a view of when online sales of games overtake classic retail distribution”, Reeves said.

With the carpet sort of pulled out from under Leipzig last year it will be interesting to see how the survive and if they thrive with this new, more niche, focus.

David Reeves and Jong Hyun Wi to Give Opening Keynote Speeches [Gamescon]

“After 15 memorable years, I’m going to retire at the end of this month,” said Reeves. “It has been a true pleasure working at Playstation, pushing the boundaries of the gaming industry.”

Reeves said he decided to speak at Capcom’s annual event because of their long-standing relationship with the publisher.

“I’m here talking to you because of the relationship between Capcom and Sony that has been cultivated to create some of the greatest games over the years and it’s a relationship we will continue to cultivate.”

Reeves says that the relationship between Capcom and Playstation goes back to 1994, the year the Playstation launched.

“Against everyone’s advice, we created a disc-based console and launched it into the powerhouse of Nintendo,” he said. “This relationship has continued through to the Playstation 2 and to the latest generation with the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3.”

Reeves said that it is this relationship between the two companies that brought him to Capcom’s event that night to give what would be his last official presentation to the press.

Most surprising that evening, was Reeves self-deprecating comments about the Playstation Portable

“We know that our own Sony line-up has not been up to expectations, but tonight is a prime example of how that has been rectified,” he said. “Monster Hunter Freedom Unite sold 3 million units in Japan… showing what can happen when you bring a top quality product to the Playstation Portable.”

Reeves wrapped up his short presentation by expressing his pleasure at working in the industry for so long.

“The industry has changed beyond recognition throughout the 15 years I’ve worked in it,” he said. “It will always be an industry I will be proud to be a part of.”

“I don’t think it will be next year, but in three to five years it will become dominant on the market,” Reeves told industry site GamesIndustry. “The legacy will be that people will see a tortoise and hare situation. In a way, in the end it will be a dead heat. People will say PS3 took a while to get going but it really caught up very quickly and confounded many of the critics from the first year.”

So David Reeves thinks that the PS3 will be dominate in 2012 or 2014. Meaning? Meaning by Reeves most liberal estimate, it could take the PS3 almost eight years to become dominate in the market — leaving the console with a little over two years left in its proposed ten year life-span to rule the roost.

Shame because David Reeves is retiring tomorrow. He has been the gift that keeps on giving.

PS3 to be dominant in 3 – 5 years, says Reeves [GamesImdustry]

“Monster Hunter Freedom Unite sold 3 million units in Japan, showing what can happen when you bring a quality product to the Playstation Portable,” David Reeves, president and chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe, said. “We feel we can attract this sort of audience elsewhere with this game if we can get them to play it ad-hoc.”

So Sony plans to bring a demo of the title to both UMD and for digital distribution sometime before the game hits North America on June 23, he said. He added that Sony will also be releasing a “Monster Hunter bundle” in Europe, but didn’t detail what exactly that would entail or if it would be released elsewhere.

Admirable, but rumours swirled that Reeves was repaying society by taking a “senior position” at Crackdown developers Realtime Worlds.

Realtime wha? says Reeves. “I’d never ever heard of Realtime Worlds until someone asked me about them a couple of days ago,” Reeves told industry site Develop. “I can honestly say no, that rumour is not true.” And we can honestly say as head of Sony Entertainment Europe, David Reeves should know major European third party devs.

The press release announcing SCEE boss David Reeves’ departure from the company said he was “retiring”. But a rumour on VG247 makes it sound more like he was “resigning”.

According to sources, the site claims that, rather than retiring to spend his days on a beach sipping fruity drinks with umbrellas in them, David Reeves will instead be taking up a “senior position” at Realtime Worlds, the developers behind Crackdown and the upcoming APB.

Contacted for comment, SCEE would only say that they do not comment on “rumours & speculation”.

Rumour: David Reeves moving to Realtime Worlds [VG247]

With David Reeves retiring, Sony exec Andrew House will assume the role of President, CEO and Co-Chief Operating officer of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe as of May 1.

“I’m very happy to welcome Andrew back to the PlayStation business and to work closely with him again” said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment. “I’m confident that the skills and expertise Andy has gained over the years working as Sony’s CMO will contribute enormously in leading the PlayStation business in Europe/PAL countries and regions and to bring new initiatives in managing the business in the coming networked era.”

House has been with Sony since 1990, staring in corporate communications in Sony Corporation (Japan), where he toiled for five years. By 1995, he was working on the marketing for the original PlayStation and game titles. House went on to work in marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, helping to establish the PS brand and later devise launch strategies for the PS2 and the PSP.

Since 2005, he has worked at Sony Corporation as Chief Marketing Officer handling corporate marketing across all of Sony’s business.

“I’m delighted to return to the PlayStation fold and excited to take on this new challenge,” House said, “I have strong ties to the interactive entertainment industry and I believe there is huge potential for further growth of our business in the Europe/PAL countries and regions, particularly in the area of networked entertainment. I’m looking forward to working with everyone at SCEE and with other groups in Sony to help achieve this potential.”

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss David Reeves has announced that he is retiring, having been with the company since 1995.

“It has been a wonderful ride with PlayStation,” said David Reeves in a SCEE statement. “I have just two things to say on leaving: I want to thank all of those people who have supported SCEE and me personally in the past 14 years; you have been magnificent! Secondly, I am going to spend my time now trying to repay society for all I have taken from it. If your children are having physics lessons at the local school or wondering why their ski instructor is very elderly, your car mechanic has a bad back, or the social worker keeps bringing you PSP games, then it could just be me! Good luck to everybody at SCEE and everybody who continues to support us.”

Reeves was responsible for managing over a hundred territories in Europe/PAL, and according to Sony Computer Entertainment president Kazuo Hirai, Reeves was key in building up a strong Sony base in Europe/PAL territories.

“David’s contribution in firmly establishing the PlayStation brand and expanding the business in Europe/PAL territories in his 14 year tenure at SCEE is immeasurable,” said Sony Computer Entertainment President and Group CEO Kazuo Hirai. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude to David for the many accomplishments he made to the PlayStation business and wish him the best luck in his future endeavors.”

Reeves will be replaced by Chief Marketing Officer Andrew House, who will take over the reins on May 1.

Yes, last night, SCEE boss David Reeves made a silly boxing analogy. But he also said some other stuff. Namely, about how the PS3 will, later this year, start using smaller, cheaper Cell chips.

The Cell being, of course, the thing that runs the PS3. The Cell currently residing in retail PlayStation 3 consoles is a 65 nanometer one, but will soon – as we already know – be replaced by a 45 nanometer chip. But how soon? Reeves says the replacement will take place “probably in middle of the year”.

A 45nm chip means the PS3 will use less power. It also means the machine will run cooler. And finally – and most importantly – it’ll be cheaper to manufacture. Up til now, every time Sony have reduced production costs on the machine, they’ve pocketed the extra change.

But by the middle of next year? They’ll need a price cut by then, and this is probably just the thing to enable such a move.

‘We simply have to suffer,’ says Sony Europe’s gaming chief [The Guardian]

PS3 sales have dipped slightly. Sony as a whole is hurting. But don’t go counting Sony out. Sony’s a fighter. And more importantly, Sony’s Sony.

“We simply have to suffer a little,” Sony Europe honcho David Reeves tells The Guardian, “go down in market share and mind-share. It’s like Ali vs. Foreman — go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out. We’re still standing, we’re still profitable and there’s a lot of fight in us. I don’t say we will land a knockout blow, but we’re there and we’re fighting.”

Sony’s not only fighting, but learning from its competitors. “We’ve learned from Nintendo how to grow the market and move from handheld device to device — they’ve done it brilliantly,” Reeves says. “And we’ve learned an enormous amount from Microsoft, too.”

As the economic climate worsens, Reeves concedes that customers will be shopping on price. Sony is thus continuing to make the PS3 competitive as a game console and as a multi-media device.

Reeves also tells The Guardian why Sony didn’t offer a pre-holiday PS3 price cut: “If we’d cut the price, lost another billion dollars, we might have had a huge Christmas but it would have been followed by a huge loss. The company could have thought: ‘Hmm, I’m not sure I want to be in this business at all.’ But we’ve shown Sony this is still a good business to have.”

The bright spot: According to The Guardian, Sony has racked up 1.1 million in Killzone 2 pre-orders.

‘We simply have to suffer,’ says Sony Europe’s gaming chief [The Guardian via VG247] [Pic]