Why are there no big name video games being released this month?

There are many things that seem broken about the video games industry at the moment but one of the complaints that I always find puzzling is that there are too many games being released. Not in the sense that I think there can never be too many but that I simply don’t agree. By total number, if you count out all the lowest of the low rent indie games on Steam, maybe there’s more but in terms of big name triple-A video games – the ones people actually care about – there are worryingly few.

Since it’s just before Christmas, November is normally the biggest month for new game releases and yet the biggest multiformat launch this month is… well, there isn’t one. If you put a gun to my head, looking at the release schedule, I guess it’s either Farming Simulator 25 or Planet Coaster 2? If that’s not scraping the bottom of the barrel, I don’t know what is.

There are a few format exclusives but they’re equally low tier: Nintendo’s least anticipated exclusive of the season in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the poorly reviewed Lego Horizon Adventures, the not-really-a-game Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and the probably good but not very mainstream S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl.

The worst thing is that apart from Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was meant to be out in November, this isn’t because of delays, this is simply all there is. [Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was also delayed – GC]. In December there’s Indiana Jones And The Great Circle – another Xbox console exclusive that doesn’t seem likely to sell very well – and that’s it for the entire year.

That’s a miserable state of affairs and, for me, yet more proof that the people in charge of games companies are pretty much universally incompetent. I’ve heard some suggestion that this is all a delayed result of the pandemic, which may be true to some degree but I imagine it’s simply because games take longer nowadays and things they thought were going to be finished in four or five years are now taking six or seven.

Publishers talk about a lack of growth in the console market as if this is a surprise, but don’t seem to draw any connection between the decline in the number of triple-A games being released and the fall in console sales and people’s general lack of interest in gaming over the last two years.

PlayStation 5 console sales have dropped more than expected? Hey, maybe that’s because you’ve gone 12 months without having a major new game? Xbox sales have been in the doldrums for the last two generations and you had to spend 10 gazillion dollars buying Activision Blizzard to compete? Hmm… you know, I think I might know why that is.

Oh, but that Switch is still selling well despite coming up to its eighth birthday? And Nintendo has been releasing a steady stream of well-received games, with three out this autumn? You know, it might just be that there’s some kind of connection there.

Imagine if the movie industry shutdown for two months in the middle of the summer and instead of the latest MCU film or Tom Cruise movie you got a bunch of indie stuff you’ve never heard of and a vague promise that something better might be out next year? That is the position the games industry is in at the moment and it’s pathetic.

The people in charge of these companies have got to get a grip and realise that they are in the business of making video games and they are failing. It’s not the poor developers actually creating the games that are at fault, but the idiot execs with their company bonuses who think the answer to every problem is to sack another 500 people.

Here’s an idea: maybe those 500 people could’ve made you a new game instead, that you could’ve sold at Christmas and made a profit from. Crazy idea, I know, but I think it’s worth giving a try.