Players have been consuming effectively all through 2023, because it looks as if the trade is pumping out an virtually endless provide of high quality titles. We have been handed among the finest reviewed video games ever in current months, because of Baldur’s Gate 3 turning into a shock smash hit, Nintendo knocking it out of the park with each Mario and Zelda, and Insomniac delivering arguably one of the best superhero recreation ever made.
Most of us have a basic feeling that 2023 is up there as among the best years in gaming ever, and we now have the details to again that up. In accordance with stats put collectively by Axios Gaming, this yr has seen extra video games launch to a Metacritic rating of over 90 than any yr prior to now 20 years, as 25 titles have obtained Metacritic’s high billing for the reason that begin of the yr.
If even Xbox is killing it with nice exclusives like Hello-Fi Rush and Starfield, you already know it has been a reasonably good yr.
Comparatively, the typical rely of video games getting greater than 90 annually over the previous decade has been roughly half of that. The final yr to see so many 90+ rated titles launched in a single yr was 2011, which noticed the launches of big titles like Portal 2, Darkish Souls, Batman: Arkham Metropolis, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Notorious 2, Uncharted 3, and so forth.
2023’s staggering complete of 25 video games with a rating of 90+ does not paint the entire image although. There are a number of completely unbelievable titles which have simply missed out on the 90+ threshold this yr, together with Hello-Fi Rush, Armored Core 6, Alan Wake 2, the Lifeless Area remake, and indie gem Pizza Tower. It has been a improbable yr, and threatens to get even higher with titles like Persona 5 Tactica and Like a Dragon: Gaiden but to launch.
Nevertheless, regardless of it being such an excellent yr for video games themselves, the identical cannot be stated in regards to the trade as a complete. We have seen numerous individuals impacted by mass layoffs all through 2023, the latest instance being PlayStation-owned studio Bungie. Regardless of insisting that layoffs weren’t going to occur, the studio has now laid off over 100 employees, because the announcement was shortly adopted up by a “tone-deaf” response from CEO Pete Parsons.
For each recreation that will get over a rating of over 90+ on Metacritic, there is a completely different writer that asserts both mass layoffs or a studio closure, and it simply retains occurring. It is a signal of an extremely unhealthy trade, as increasingly more publishers utterly disregard the lives of the folks that makes the unbelievable video games we get to play. This can be among the best years for video games that we have ever seen, however it’s additionally undoubtedly one of many worst.
