Welcome once again to the annual TheSixthAxis Alternative Game of the Year Awards, in which we recognise some of the more obscure achievements of gaming in 2024. Join us as we look back at a year that was, with more remasters and remakes than you can shake a stick at – how long before we get some remasters of remakes? – companies deciding to burn their business model to the ground, and our yearly hunt for the most ridiculous video game title.
It might have looked like Microsoft were building a games industry Death Star with last year’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but unlike the fantasy of Star Wars’ evil Empire, Xbox now has to face up to reality. They’ve spent an awful lot of money building this thing, but now they want to make that back, and PlayStation has been absolutely thrashing them in terms of console sales. So, after years of saying this was all about Xbox exclusives, they’ve started releasing those games on the “rival” platform.
But wait, it’s only going to be for small indie games and absolutely not Indy games, said Phil Spencer. Fast forward six months and Microsoft cheerfully announce that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5.
That’s opened the floodgates and now Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2 and more are coming to PS5. We’re still waiting for Starfield and Hellblade 2 to be announced, but there’s apparently no “red lines” for what will come to PlayStation in future.
This was a pretty close run thing this year, a two horse race between Sony and Nintendo, but with the reveal and release of the PlayStation 5 Pro, there can only be one winner here. Nintendo… why won’t you just announce the Nintendo Switch 2 already?
You basically have already, with every single Nintendo Direct since the middle of the year also coming with a disclaimer that there definitely wouldn’t be a new console announcement.
The PlayStation Portal was released at the start of this year to a collective “meh”. Sure, it’s a nice device, but you had to
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