2022 is almost over, but what do you think of a year when gaming was better than ever despite Microsoft and Sony’s radio silence?
We’re now in the third year of the current generation of consoles, and it feels like we’re just getting started. The news of the wider world, a relentless circle of misfortune, has revealed that while the pandemic still casts a paralyzing shadow over the gaming industry, Cost of living The crisis suddenly meant that even the best value-for-money games and hardware now seem like an unwarranted luxury.
The amount of games released in 2022 is still significantly lower than pre-pandemic, following the same pattern of 2021. So most of the big name games were released in the first half of this year as they were all delayed from Christmas 2020. The 2023 schedule is similar, with the situation improving each year, but the recovery has been slow and it’s unclear if things will return to ‘normal’.
Publishers will be more eager than anyone to increase the amount of new games released, but it’s getting harder and harder to blame the pandemic for the lack of previews and general communication. takes time to create, so it’s understandable why it would be cut from a developer’s already busy schedule. But with so many games going through the entire release cycle without serious scrutiny, there aren’t many excuses for not having an interview today.
It’s starting to look more and more intentional, especially given the general reluctance of publishers to have important communications with their customers. His one of the key trends in 2022 was the lack of news in general, not just a drop in the number of big name releases. Rumors of varying levels of accuracy have picked up some of the slack, but there have been few notable announcements from Sony or Microsoft, or indeed most of the big publishers.
When Nintendo seems like the most open and talkative publisher out there, you know there are some very weird things going on at times. If you know it didn’t work before but for some reason you want to try again.
It’s unclear what benefit this is supposed to provide. When EA announced Need for Speed Unbound just weeks before its release, it certainly didn’t help. It seems strange dealing with a big release like Star Wars Jedi Survivor, but it’s silence from Sony and Microsoft. It caused the most confusion and anger among fans.
Sony kicked off the year at the top of the world with PlayStation 5 gradually becoming available in stock and huge successes with Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7. Word from them is the rest of the year, except (at the last possible moment) touting God Of War Ragnarök and the increasingly ill-timed PlayStation VR2.
They probably have dozens of other projects underway, but they don’t talk about them, and even when they do announce something, it’s done via an Anodyne blog post, which is indignant. Schoolchildren doing their breakfast dirty homework.
Where this brusque, uncommunicative demeanor comes from is a mystery, but it’s extremely obnoxious and can’t help but fuel the plot. not properly advertised by Sony, especially if overall decrease A strange situation with subscriptions and PS Plus Premium and its almost perfect situation Lack of games on PlayStation 1 and 2.
As for Microsoft, they spent the better part of the year that the biggest company on the planet was actually a brave underdog and that buying the world’s biggest third-party publisher would do them no good. has spent a series of increasingly desperate attempts to convince exclusive investigators ofThe Negative Impact of Call of Duty on the Gaming Industry “Nothing Unique”.
To their apparent shock, not everyone took their guarantees at face value. so many concessions Microsoft executives must now be wondering if it’s worth the effort.
It’s easy to imagine that part of the reason for the lack of announcements this year is that they don’t want to say or do anything that would ruin their chances of getting Activision Blizzard. – The really exciting news is come next yearIt’s always next year.
Undoubtedly, the weight of all their money will ensure they get their way in the end, but the genie is coming out of the bottle anyway, and Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda has already spurred action. is applied. We’ve seen multiple publishers skyrocket. Meanwhile, companies that remain independent, such as Ubisoft and EA, have made it perfectly clear that they are open to offers.
We now face the terrifying prospect of the entire video game industry being owned by only a few multinational corporations.It’s probably just a miserable failure of Google’s Stadia, in the end get out of that misery This year has stopped companies like Amazon and Apple from gaining a larger share of the gaming industry.
2022 is hopelessly depressing in terms of how the video game industry operates, and all predictions are that 2023 will be even worse. Still, 2022 was actually a pretty good year in most other respects. There may not have been as many new games as you’d hoped for, but the ones that were released rarely disappoint.
Things like Elden Ring, Bayonetta 3, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Top 20 for 2022 But in the past 12 months, there have been tons of games, big and small, that have surprised and moved us.
It was especially heartening to see that elden ring was not only a critical hit, it won every Game of the Year award on its way, but it was also a commercial smash.
Elden Ring is on the list Top 10 best sellers of all time This is an achievement for a game that doesn’t make any of the concessions you’d expect in a modern game in terms of difficulty and hand-holding. Also, no microtransactions, battle passes, or the grimy features of other big-name titles.
FromSoftware’s Elden Ring is a genuinely successful game that is expected to have a significant and lasting impact on the entire gaming industry. It was good, and people bought it.In an ideal world, publishing and developing video games would be more complicated than ever.
Despite all the corporate machinations, it was video games that saved 2022. It’s nice to think that’s all you need, but unfortunately the reality is not so simple. It is heartening to know that their passion and imagination are still shining.
e-mail gamecentral@metro.co.ukleave a comment below, and follow me on twitter.
more : Metro GameCentral Video Game Awards – Best of 2022
more : Best Mobile Games of 2022 on iOS and Android – Marvel Snap to Vampire Survivors
more : 11 Biggest Video Game News Stories of 2022 – From Acquisitions to Price Increases
Follow Metro Gaming twitter Email us gamecentral@metro.co.uk
To more easily send letters and reader features in your inbox without having to send an email, Post page here.
For other stories like this, check out our games page.
https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/31/video-game-review-of-2022-a-year-of-quiet-success-17979303/ Video Game Reviews 2022 – A Year of Quiet Success