The latter half of the year brought blockbuster after blockbuster, interspersed with indie gems, in a deluge of content that will keep players occupied well into 2024. As Microsoft and Sony finally left the last gen behind, console releases took technological leaps, though Nintendo’s relatively low-powered Switch, which struggled to run many multi-platform titles, had a hell of a last hurrah. The games, though? They were great-possibly better than ever. The aftereffects of post-pandemic contraction and a wave of acquisition and consolidation cost thousands of designers their jobs, even as the industry reckoned with AI’s potentially transformative (and terrifying) impact on game development and voice acting. This was a best-of-times, worst-of-times type of year for video games.
