After an extended and busy 12 months, 2024 is officially within the books. Players have a number of weeks to rest before the video game release calendar picks up in February with a barrage of major releases. That’s an issue for next month, though. Until then, we’ve still got a while to reflect on what was a rollercoaster 12 months for the gaming industry, filled with surprise hits, total flops, and surprising no shows.
At the middle of all that was the three pillars of mainstream gaming: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. While their power could also be waning within the age of portable PCs just like the Steam Deck, these platform holders are still the watercooler conversation starters whose every move generates buzz. This 12 months, all three corporations found themselves in an odd spot. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X hit the awkward midpoint of their lifespans, while the Nintendo Switch was left to tread water after its much anticipated successor was pushed out of 2024. All three would need to get creative in the event that they were going to finish the 12 months strong.
The excellent news is that every one three pulled that task off, even when nobody excelled. Each company had an asterisk on its record that created an uneven 12 months irrespective of which console you played on. Continuing last 12 months’s tradition, we’re once more closing out the 12 months by handing out final grades to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. All three passed, but they’ll all need to review harder in the event that they’re going to grow to be A students in 2025.
PlayStation
If I were a tricky grader, I’d have good reason to flunk the PS5 this 12 months. Sony’s 12 months was filled with flops and disappointments that made its 2024 look dire in a vacuum. Its biggest hardship got here in the shape of Concord, a game that was meant to usher in PlayStation’s live service future. As a substitute, it was an instantaneous failure that was taken offline in weeks and the studio behind it was shuttered. That one costly disaster can have put years of planning in jeopardy, single-handedly changing what PlayStation’s future will seem like.
That bad news was coupled by some soft letdowns. The much anticipated PS5 Pro finally launched this 12 months, but with underwhelming specs considering its eye-popping price tag. That made the system a slow starter, one which raised questions on how much incremental power is actually mandatory in a console. It didn’t help that the system’s AI upscaling tool, PSSR, was a bit buggy at launch, too. Elsewhere on the hardware front, Sony looked as if it would all but abandon its VR ambitions, offering little or no software support for PlayStation VR2 (it’s biggest upgrade this 12 months was PC support). At times, it felt like Sony’s hardware business had hit a brick wall.
If I were only those lowlights, though, it could be a reductive view of what was a powerful 12 months for PlayStation overall. Sony’s wins didn’t come from puffed up first-party exclusives like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, but through unexpected surprises that helped expand the system to latest audiences. The crown jewel of the crop was Astro Bot, which found Sony once more making the sort of all-ages platformer that helped construct the unique PlayStation. Helldivers 2 emerged as a live service success story that counter-balanced Concord‘s failure. Even Stellar Blade landed as a pleasing surprise, allowing a Korean developer to search out international success.
In between those peaks, we got a handful of third-party exclusives that gave the PS5 the very best game lineup of any console this 12 months. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth delivered the praise that Final Fantasy XVI couldn’t quite achieve in 2023, while Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 pulled off the not possible task of remaking among the finest games of all time in a satisfying manner. Those highs were enough to round out an uneven 12 months where Sony leaned heavily on unnecessary double dips like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. It can have been the PS5’s best and worst 12 months in a single.
Grade: B
Xbox
Because the launch of the Xbox Series X in 2020, it was clear that Microsoft’s console was going to have an unusual lifespan. Microsoft made it clear early on that it wasn’t necessarily attempting to pump out killer apps a lot because it was attempting to make Game Pass a life-style subscription service that each gamer needed. 2024 would take that experiment to some truly unpredictable places that left Xbox fans with whiplash; we seemingly alternated between terrible news and great games every month.
The bad side was very bad. Xbox kicked the 12 months off with mass layoffs, which shut down each Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. The latter was incredibly puzzling considering that the studio had developed perhaps the Series X’s best exclusive, Hi-Fi Rush, only one 12 months prior. Later within the 12 months, Microsoft rolled out a convoluted Game Pass price hike that turned the “best deal in gaming” into an expensive proposition. It didn’t help that a few of the service’s biggest games didn’t exactly pan out as expected. Each Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 were buggy messes at launch, while Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 and Starfield: Shattered Space landed as underwhelming releases.
It was a continuing PR crisis for Xbox in 2024, even when it wasn’t warranted. Xbox’s decision to release certain exclusives on competing platforms must have been a cause for celebration as Microsoft eroded the annoying exclusivity wall that divides consoles. As a substitute, the move fueled console war outrage. Similar, Xbox made great strides to make its game more accessible than ever, bringing Game Pass to devices like Amazon Fire Stick. That too was criticized due to the corporate’s “That is an Xbox” ad campaign, which implied that any device that might run its games was essentially an Xbox. That move rubbed console purists the flawed way, but I see the underlying message as a positive step forward for video games.
While it wasn’t an enormous 12 months for exclusives, Xbox delivered where it mattered. It ended the 12 months strong with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, two of the best-received games of this Xbox generation. In path to those tentpole release, we got a gentle stream of “day one” third-party releases that also sold the service’s value. Dungeons of Hinterberg and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess are each sleeper hits that ended up on Digital Trends best 10 games of 2024 list. With that in mind, I’m willing to let Xbox out of 2024 with a wonderfully good, if unremarkable grade. I expect to see some big improvement in 2025, though.
Grade: B-
Nintendo
After receiving a coveted A grade in last 12 months’s report, Nintendo had a giant task ahead of it — and it gave the impression of it could don’t have any problem delivering. In any case, 2024 was surely going to be the 12 months we finally got the Nintendo Switch 2, bringing a bevy of heavy hitting exclusives like Mario Kart 9 or Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
Well … that didn’t occur. In any case the anticipation, Nintendo’s latest console was a complete no show. Nintendo would acknowledge its existence after years of speculation, nevertheless it stopped short of really showing it off or announcing a lot as a spec. That left Nintendo in a weird spot when it got here to software. It was clear that the corporate’s most celebrated developers were quietly working on latest games for the platform, leaving the B-squad to fill out the Switch’s final full 12 months. To Nintendo’s credit, it delivered at the least one exclusive a month from January to December, however the actually lineup was eclectic.
Only a few Switch exclusives released in 2024 were must-own library additions. The closest ones were Super Mario Party Jamboree and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, but nothing rose to the extent of Super Mario Odyssey or Fire Emblem: Three Houses. As a substitute, we got a buffet of area of interest games and odd remakes. It’s not that games like Mario vs. Donkey Kong or Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition weren’t welcome on Switch; it’s just that these were the console’s primary games quite than quirky filler. Those games didn’t at all times deliver either, as games like Infinite Ocean: Luminous and Princess Peach: Showtime! felt more like underdeveloped experiments than the sort of polished games we’ve come to expect within the Switch’s lifespan.
Even when it was an underwhelming 12 months overall, the experimental nature of Switch’s 12 months occasionally led to the sort of highlights that may only occur when a publisher isn’t being precious. Emio — The Smiling Man is a improbable revival of Famicom Detective Club that I don’t think we might ever get outside of a 12 months like this. Splatoon 3‘s underappreciated Side Order DLC is a real hidden gem, and I can’t complain a couple of full remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Yr Door. The peaks weren’t exactly high, but that is the sort of strange 12 months that I imagine I’ll look back on with nostalgia in a number of years when Nintendo is back in its usual rotation of predictable hits.
Grade: C+
