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In This Edition
- The big winners of Gamescom 2025
- Bloober Team on horror and Nintendo
- Should devs flee Hollow Knight?
Hello there! We are back from Gamescom and (seemingly) escaped the event lurgy. Which is good, because we’ve got a lot to share with you.
This week on The Game Business Show, we discuss the biggest themes and games from Gamescom, utilising data from Fancensus, GameDiscoverCo and Press Engine. And we’re joined by Ampere Analysis games boss Piers Harding-Rolls to dive into the numbers.
Elsewhere, we interview Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno on the growing horror genre, and his grand designs for Nintendo.
Plus, we speak to indie publishers about the number of smaller teams fleeing the launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong.
You can listen or watch the whole thing above (or via your podcasting platform of choice). Alternatively, we’ve run through the big stories below. Enjoy!
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight delivered huge numbers at Gamescom
Hollow Knight: Silksong, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Resident Evil 9: Requiem may have been the biggest games of Gamescom 2025, but when it came to new reveals, it was Batman that dominated.
TT Games’ LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was announced at Opening Night Live last week, and attracted 400,000 Steam Wishlists, according to GameDiscoverCo. That’s more than any other game at Gamescom.
In terms of press coverage, the family title generated 504 headlines, according to Fancensus (Press Engine has the number higher at 685), beating out competition from Black Myth: Zhong Kui, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 and Kirby Air Riders.
In the charts below, we track the games that generated the most amount of press coverage. The statistics come from Fancensus and Press Engine, which both track things slightly differently. We have also shared GameDiscoverCo’s chart on the PC titles that generated the biggest increase in Wishlisting on Steam.
And here are our takeaways:
Hollow Knight: Silksong was the clear winner of the show. The Metroidvania had already amassed 3.8 million Wishlists before Gamescom, but still added a further 300,000 during the event. It also enjoyed in 1,423 press articles according to Fancensus, and 1,682 according to Press Engine, which is more than any other game.
Opening Night Live was the big winner of Gamescom 2025, with 72 million viewers (up 80% year-on-year). 17 of the most covered games were shown during ONL (which, for full transparency, is run by The Game Business co-founder Geoff Keighley), and 17 of the most Wishlisted titles appeared during it, too.
The Wishlisted games that performed well without ONL’s help included Hell Let Loose: Vietnam and The Blood of the Dawnwalker, which both appeared during the Future Game Show, and Star Trek Voyager – Across the Unknown, which was announced directly. In terms of coverage, the three games that did well without ONL were Kirby Air Riders (shown via a Nintendo Direct), Borderlands 4 (which appeared during an IGN broadcast) and Pragmata (Future Games Show).
Overall media coverage was quite low, with only two games exceeding 1,000 articles.
Some of the biggest Wishlisted games received very little media coverage, including Valor Mortis, Road Kings, Zero Parades, Denshattack!, Long Gone, La Divina Commedia and Routine. This highlights how studios and publishers can drive interest in their titles even without media attention.
Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter Wilds (not included here) also generated decent press coverage on the back of its cross-over announcement during Opening Night Live.
Top 20 Unreleased Games at Gamesom by press coverage
(Fancensus and Press Engine data)
The Top 20 Steam Wishlist Increases of Gamescom
(GameDiscoverCo data)
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Bloober Team wants to make Nintendo a home for horror games
Horror specialist Bloober Team dreams of making Nintendo consoles a destination for horror fans once again.
Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno told The Game Business that he is a huge fan of Nintendo, which was part of the reason the firm is releasing its upcoming title, Cronos: The New Dawn, on Nintendo Switch 2 next week.
Nintendo platforms may be seen as family-friendly, but there was a time during the GameCube era when Nintendo had become a home for top horror projects.
“I'm trying to make my personal dreams come true,” Babieno told us. “I am a huge Nintendo fan. I grew up with Nintendo consoles. The most important horrors, like Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 4… were available on Nintendo GameCube. It was a gold time for Nintendo fans. In some ways, we would like to be the one to open a new chapter for Nintendo right now.”
He added: “We have some plans. We are not able to share our vision for the future yet. But definitely Nintendo fans could take a look at Bloober Team.”
One of the surprising statistics about horror games is that there is a strong cross-over with cozy games. Babieno hinted that Bloober Team has an eye on this genre, and once again pointed to Nintendo as to how these two opposite worlds suit each other.
“The best [example] is Luigi’s Mansion. What [Nintendo game director] Kono-san did with this title was pretty impressive. And I believe that there is a huge possibility to repeat such an idea in the future.”
“We would like to be the one to open a new chapter for Nintendo right now”
Bloober Team now boasts 250 staff and is eager to capitalise on the success of last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake, which Babieno jokes has raised the expectation for his company “too much”. But he insists the firm is not looking to expand rapidly, and once again points to how Nintendo keeps teams together.
“We didn’t cut any staff at Bloober Team for the last few years,” he said. “This is really important because I believe that if we have teams that are making great games and understand our DNA, it's much easier to create new projects. And I think that this is another parallel with Nintendo, because [it has] a similar spirit of how we are trying to do things.
He continued: “We are still trying to be reasonable. We are not working on more than two projects, because we don't want to lose the quality. But at the same time, we don't want to work on just one, because even with the best partner, even with the best project, you don't necessarily have to be successful. I’m always saying that if you have 250 people, you are not just responsible for 250 people, but also their families. It's really important for me to have plans which are supporting the vision. We are not growing too fast. We are growing exactly like I feel we should.”
It's a competitive time for horror games. At Gamescom, titles like Resident Evil 9, Silent Hill F and Cronos were all competing for attention. But Babieno insists there is still room for more.
“I believe that competition will make our genre even bigger. So, I’m expecting that some more companies will decide to create horror games as well,” he said.
“Always when there are some global climate changes, some crises, wars… horror [becomes] stronger. This is the history of horror. Right now, the times are a little bit darker. Horror is trying to prepare us for something that is unexpected. I believe that’s the reason why we are seeing more and more horrors in the movies, in the streaming services and also the games.”
In conclusion, Babieno says Bloober Team is looking to improve ‘step by step’ and game by game.
“It isn’t our goal to be the biggest player on the Polish stock exchange,” he said. “Our goal is to be the best horror game developer.”
Should developers flee Hollow Knight: Silksong?
During Gamescom, Team Cherry announced that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch September 4, and numerous indie developers have delayed their games to avoid it.
These include Aeterna Lucis, CloverPit, Baby Steps, Demonschool, Faeland and Megabonk.
But are they right to? Experts in indie publishing told The Game Business that the decision should come down to whether your audience actually crosses over with Hollow Knight.
“You shouldn’t move unless you feel like your buyers majorly overlap with Silksong's, or you believe you are going to go viral with the same streamers… We've seen private research indicating that player counts for already-launched rival games were only affected if the game was in the same, very specific subgenre as that big launch,” said GameDiscoverCo leader Simon Carless.
“However, I've heard some people claim that Silksong is a 'GTA 6 for indies’ type situation, and therefore an exception. It's... possible.”
Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender added: "I think other developers might reasonably choose not to release a Metroidvania very close to Hollow Knight. It's probably going to consume a lot of attention from players, journalists and content creators who like that genre.
“Still, one can overestimate how much such things matter outside the specific genre involved. If you have a different sort-of game, I wouldn't worry about it. There are a lot of people out there looking for games to play. In the end, everyone is drawing cups from a vast ocean of potential players with widely differing tastes.”
James Schall, the chief publishing officer at Secret Mode, said that developers are better off focusing on their games, rather than dwelling too much on others.
“To quote a great Jedi. ‘There are always bigger fish’. Someone will move, you’ll move and then the big fish moves to you. Focus on the time and day of the week, not the date. That is far more important and also something you can actually control.”
The original Hollow Knight sold over 15 million copies in eight years, making it the biggest Metroidvania game in the genre’s history. In fact, it’s already over half way to selling as many units as the entire Metroid or Castlevania franchises, which are the two brands the genre is named after.
What’s more, the player base remains active. Ampere data shows that over three million new players acquired Hollow Knight between June 2024 and June 2025, while the game’s peak month for players was back in April this year.
What will be interesting is the price point for Hollow Knight: Silksong. The first game has the budget price of $15, with frequent price reductions to $7.50.
Meanwhile…
357,000 visitors attended Gamescom 2025 from 128 countries, up from 335,000 from 120 countries in 2024. There were 34,000 trade visitors and 1,568 exhibitors.
India has its first video games-only trade body: The Indian Game Publishers and Developers Association (IGPDA). It follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal to make India a hub for games, esports and innovation. Founding members of the IGPDA includes Nazar Technologies, Gametion, nCore Games, Reliance Games, SuperGaming, Tara Gaming, underDOGS Studio, Aeos Games and Dot9 Games.
Nintendo Switch 2 has now surpassed two million sales in the US. The console is tracking 75% ahead of the original Nintendo Switch (Circana data).
In total, $5.1 billion was spent on games hardware, content and accessories in the US during July, according to Circana. This is an increase of 5% over the year before. The key games included EA Sports College Football 26, Donkey Kong Bananza and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4.
Lightspeed Japan Studio has opened a second office in Osaka, and hired Capcom veterans Hideaki Itsuno, Toshihiro Nakagawa and Daigo Ikeno to run it, VGC reports. The trio are best known for their work on Devil May Cry and Dragon’s Dogma.
Crystal Dynamics has announced further lay-offs, which follows the cancellation of the Perfect Dark project it was working on with Microsoft. Exact numbers were not shared. The studio said that Tomb Raider is unaffected by the cuts.
Nominations have opened for the Golden Joystick Awards 2025. Developers and publishers have until September 5 to nominate their games through here.
Phew! That’s it for today. We’ll be back next week when we chat to Indiana Jones developer MachineGames. Until then, thank you for reading!
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