2024 was the year of Microsoft's grand pivot | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

At the outset of 2024, the most often expressed concern about this year in the games business was that it was going to have a very sparse and underwhelming release calendar, at least compared to the spectacular heights of 2023. This was to some extent a ripple effect from the pandemic years: a backlog of delayed software made its way onto the market during 2023, meaning that with many major studios set to be in the early stages of new projects, 2024's line-up did not look very inspiring.

With the benefit of hindsight, that fear didn't entirely come to pass; or at least, whatever slump in the release schedule for 2024 we did experience was spread out rather unevenly around different parts of the industry.

Fears of a fallow 2024 overall, then, did not come to pass – at least not for everyone

From a consumer's perspective, it's actually been a pretty solid year for games in the end. It may ultimately come to be seen as the calm before 2025's GTA 6 storm, but this year has held up remarkably well thanks to a combination of hit titles nobody really saw coming – Helldivers 2 and Astro Bot are especially notable here, having rescued Sony from what would otherwise have been a pretty shockingly empty year in the middle of its console cycle – and, especially in the back half of the year, some games that really defied expectations.

In terms of expectations being defied, quite a few games turned up that had largely been written off as development hell nightmares, and have ended up being actually pretty great. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the prime example; on a personal level I find its gameplay a little too much of a departure from previous games in the series for my tastes, but taken on its own merits it's a very enjoyable game and far better than many people had dared to hope for after so many years.

Silent Hill 2 is a remake I don't think many people had expected to be quite so good, despite its developer's pedigree in the horror genre. The really unexpected surprise of the