The bass and drums are as loud as ever, but the mood music has changed at Gamescom, Europe’s biggest gaming fair, as developers whose bedrock business has targeted console gamers play catch-up with the mass mobile market.

A US computer games company has announced office closures in Chicago and the UK as part of a cost-cutting programme.

In what it called the biggest video game launch in the company’s 22 year history, Electronic Arts said it sold more than a million copies of The Sims 2 within the first 10 days of its release.