Gamescom 2026 came and went with plenty of noise, but the loudest moment didn’t even happen on Geoff Keighley’s stage. His two-and-a-half-hour Opening Night Live showcase was thoroughly upstaged by a 26-minute Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer that Rockstar dropped on Netflix instead. Both, in fairness, proved the same point: sometimes going long pays off.
Opening Night Live sits in an awkward spot on the calendar, wedged between Summer Game Fest in June and The Game Awards in December. With slots reportedly going for around $5,000 per second, there are only so many studios willing to blow their reveal budget at the tail end of August — and a company that can partner with Netflix certainly isn’t one of them.
So who’s paying? Increasingly, Chinese and Korean developers pushing into Western markets. Two of the event’s biggest trailer moments belonged to them: NodusFall, the new project from Genshin Impact studio HoYoverse — which looks like Monster Hunter and Elden Ring smashed together — and the return of the so-called “anime GTA,” Ananta. Both are part of a vanguard trying to redefine AAA from the outside, which, historically, is the only place AAA has ever been redefined from. Rockstar did it once. CD Projekt Red did it too.
Which brings us to the show’s quietest, most heartwarming finale. Some scoffed when Opening Night Live wrapped on a free update and a fresh expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — a game that recently sailed past its 11th birthday with total dignity. But there’s a real argument for celebrating it. The new expansion, Songs of the Past, was shown off in a Gamescom demo featuring a new weapon for Geralt and a roster of deadly enemies, and it’s designed to close out the story of CD Projekt’s beloved hero.
Here’s the part worth sitting with: because CD Projekt got waylaid by Cyberpunk 2077 and is taking its time with The Witcher 4 (now slated for 2028, with a confirmed physical release), the 2015 classic is getting its second remaster — free to all owners — plus a third, unheralded expansion. Longevity like that is rare and genuinely valuable.
The same logic applies to Rockstar. GTA 6 has taken 13 years to arrive, and in that gap GTA 5 shipped across three console generations while GTA Online quietly thrived. It’s easy to grumble about bloated, expensive development cycles that leave us waiting a decade between installments. But there’s an upside: an industry too obsessed with novelty forgets to maintain and promote what it already has.
These games deserve long lifespans, and younger players deserve to find and enjoy them without friction. Yes, we’d all bite your hand off for a proper look at The Witcher 4. But the care CD Projekt is lavishing on its predecessor speaks to something the industry could use more of — a genuine love for the medium.
