In some quarters of the industry, it's become popular to say that big game companies no longer need large events to showcase their titles. Inspired by the likes of Nintendo, which has been running its own Direct online broadcasts since 2011, many of the biggest developers and publishers in the world have started to question whether it is worth taking part in these showcases and instead would prefer to control their own narrative with trailers and marketing beats.
There's some question about correlation and causation here, as games appearing in ONL are more likely to be backed by larger marketing budgets anyway, and were significantly outperforming non-ONL games even before the show. Likewise, the post-ONL levels would reflect both the impact of the show as well as the impact of many of those big games having a presence at Gamescom and its 320,000 attendees.
But data from Fancensus suggests that it is worth being involved in these showcases. Looking at the games taking part in Gamescom's Opening Night Live event, titles that were on stage at the Geoff Keighley-hosted showcase dominated 61 per cent of total press coverage surrounding the event.