I recommend: 2023 | This Year in Videogames

this video is brought to you by gigabyte orus and their new RTX 460 gpus and their B 760i motherboards enabling super powerful but super compact builds like this one a special Starfield de PC that I took with me to the game awards earlier this month to see oris's full range click the link below or stick around to the end of the video to learn more Gamers welcome to the end of the year of Our Lord 2023 and by our Lord I of course mean t Swift let's be real it was clearly her year and we were all just lucky to be in it I suspect though that you are not here for a play-by-play on the Tay Tay you are here for a look back on the biggest video game news events people and releases that Define 2023 arguably the best year for video games in over two decades right honestly are we going to get serious I think um yes it is an amazing year for video games to come out I think it's not a great year for video games in so far as all of the layoffs I think we want to celebrate all of these games but maybe there is something missing uh because a lot of people who made those games are no longer working at those companies that was Ben star the voice of gaming sexiest leading man Clive rosfield and in that clip star accurately summarizes the contradiction inherent in 2023 this was in arguably one of the best years for video game releases in history you know those jpegs which show games that came out in years like 1997 2001 and 2004 and we're like [ __ ] man I can't believe all those games came out the same year 2023 is undoubtedly another one of those years that we'll look back on as an all-timer so thick with high quality releases that almost any of the game of the year nominees would be a clear distant Front Runner in any other year but at the same time games are made by people and for many of those people this was a terrible year for video games layoffs at dozens of Publishers saw thousands of game makers lose their jobs many of them forced to leave this industry entirely as the job market contracted sadly I've seen some indifference to this but I'd remind you that this affects us as consumers too as the wealth of knowledge that these people take with them could have been put to use making better games furthermore the hostility and uncertainty of the industry may drive away those considering a career in game making forcing them to instead become software engineers at investment Banks or Worse Crypt Bros the point is 2023 was an all-tim for both good and bad reasons and if you are a regular Watcher of this weekend video games you already know that each and every week except in July I've done my level best to highlight the best and worst that this industry has to offer and it's a project that I'm increasingly glad to do as I've said many times in the past as much as I love video games I also really love the video games industry I love knowing the story behind how a game is made how it's received how it sells how it's supported post launch I love the breakout success stories of games like pizza Tower and it will never not be funny to see obvious scams and griffs like nfts or the day before explode in a giant mushroom cloud of failure this is one hell of an industry to cover and I'm lucky to get get the chance to do that each and every week and month and year 2023 has been big so let's take a look back at what made it so it's January everyone's mom is reading that spare book from Prince Harry and let me tell you your mom does not have many nice things to say about Megan marle thankfully we're able to drown all of that out with some video games one piece Odyssey was the first major release of the year and soon after that Fire Emblem engage would go on to become a much more controversial entry into the series than many would have predicted though to be fair three houses was always going to be a tough act to follow the Dead Space remake was the first true High Point setting the stage for not only a year of high quality releases but also a year of really really high quality survival horror titles more on those later it wasn't old rainbows and pixie dust though because this was also the month that everyone got to experience the one and only for spoken so let me get this straight I'm somewhere that's not what I would call Earth I'm seeing freaking dragons and oh yeah I'm talking to a cop now I did not play for spoken for many reasons including but not limited to the fact that I was busy playing dead space and soon after that high-fi rush but it was clear that for spoken was a massive L for square enx in a year where they really couldn't afford a flop of that magnitude the game was poorly received by critics and it got an even more hostile reception from the punters its open world design and spell sling in combat was at best serviceable but many found the character setting and riding rather insufferable the commercial performance of the game was so bad that just a month after release Square enx would announc that the developer luminous Productions would be shuttered with staff being absorbed into the rest of square enix's internal production teams a sad Fall From Grace from a studio that built and maintained the Luminous engine on which Square pinned many a hope and the studio that made Final Fantasy 15 a game that appears in the game def dictionary next to the term production hell Final Fantasy 15 had way more problems than for spoken did but it also had the benefit of the Final Fantasy IP to carry it over the line for spoken was new and risky IP and you have to imagine that square are going to be rather gunshy31 million cost cutting program would begin focusing on natural attrition initially but this would later turn into layoffs Ubisoft CEO Eve gilmont put the blame squarely on his people saying quote the ball is in your court end quote this was a line so badly received that the French threatened to do what they do best strike God bless him leading eeve to apologize for his comment saying quote I heard your feedback and I'm sorry this was perceived this way end quote which roughly translates to my statement was fine you guys just didn't get it Ubisoft would rally toward the back end of the year with some moderately successful releases but none big enough to change the narrative Ubisoft are still on the back foot and they absolutely need a big 2024 if they're going to regain some momentum best of luck Skull and Bones no pressure but the biggest story of January by far with the layoffs it was as though Consultants had spent the entire Christmas break huddled together in vacant office space to see how many scalps they could claim and they claimed a lot during 2023 Facebook would lay off 21,000 people Amazon would start the year by laying off over 9,000 Google would follow suit laying off 12,000 at the end of January Microsoft announced that some 10,000 employees would lose their jobs including employees at 343 and Bethesda Phil Spencer himself put out a statement on the matter saying quote this is a challenging moment in our business and this week's actions were painful choices the gaming leadership team had to make decisions that we felt set us up for the long-term success of our products and business but the individual results of those decisions are real I know that hurts thank you for supporting our colleagues as they process these changes end quote it's a laudable sentiment but it must be said against the reality that Microsoft made $ 72.4 billion in net profit in 2023 that's 72,000 million and because that was just $400 million less dollar than last year 10,000 people lost their livelihood layoffs are often painted by corporates as necessary but they very rarely are they're usually a choice to ensure that no matter what the line keeps going up and as painful as this initial crop of job losses was it was just the beginning Excuse me while I slip into something less comfortable it's February the MCU is buckling under the weight of its own [ __ ] as evidenced by Ant-Man 3 existing for some reason Disney Executives were stunned that this one bombed they thought they had a winner on their hands luckily Jonathan major as Kang turned into a good performance looking forward to seeing more from him in the future on the video game front February has recently become this bumper month in the gaming calendar where before it was typically baren The Hangover from the holiday season still in effect the last few years though it's been basically the most stacked month of the year and this February was no exception it opened with the inspired Hi-Fi Rush which Microsoft cheekily Shadow dropped as part of a Showcase Event they ran at the start of the month like a dragon isan saw a western release for the first time and it was truly incredible if you're down with rg's unique brand of testosterone infused soap opera atomic heart was a weird one it was a good example of the large gap that often exists between critics and players as critics were pretty lukewarm on it myself included but the general reception to it was really positive and people were glad that mfish were making a game like Bioshock since no one else was doing it it was also one of the best PC ports of the year a stark contrast to Wild hearts a really fantastic Monster Hunter Style game developed by Co techmo and published by EA this earned its place at the Monster hunting genre table which is a really tall order since Capcom have that formula down cold sadly though performance on all systems particularly PC was diabolically bad making it impossible to recommend the title and absolutely crippling its momentum EA would later go on to pull back on their investment in the game with the studi subtly announcing that we shouldn't expect any new content anytime soon a very sad end for a game that deserved better there were other big releases that month Cal Space Program 2 was so unfinished that it caused a player Spike for Kerbal Space Program 1 octopath Traveler 2 will likely take home the award for best game no one played hogwart's Legacy would go on to become the biggest selling video game of 2023 outselling even Call of Duty and Destiny 2's lightfall campaign fumbled the narrative ball so badly that the expansion began a spiral one that would culminate in Bungie laying off nearly 100 staff more on that later interesting to note that the psvr 2 launched in February and how many times have you heard about it since then not many ID wager when it launched I wondered aloud if Sony was serious about VR this time since the previous headset never really became a central pillar in Sony's offering getting only very limited first party support so far it seems to be exactly the same story we got a launch title based on gorilla's Horizon franchise but since then not much I think the best indication of how serious Sony are about VR came in this month December when the studio that made the Sony published firewall series was shuted if Sony have no plans to put a studio that experienced in VR to work then you have to imagine that they don't have big plans at all certain were pulling money out of VR they were putting it into live services but February was a pretty Stark reminder of why that's probably not a very good idea February saw the official delisting of square enix's Marvel's Avengers knockout City announced that servers would be turned off later that year EA canceled two in development mobile games Apex Legends and Battlefield both of which were actually already out in certain territories and fully playable Rumble verse was a really fun wrestling Battle Royale that met its end due to a lack of Revenue Crossfire X is big in Asia but found absolutely no audience in the west and it too announced in February that both the multiplayer mode and the remedy made single player mode would be taken offline and Echo VR was one of the more promising live service VR titles it to announced it was going to that big live service graveyard in the sky all of this is proof positive of how risky these live service gambits are increasingly so as existing offerings become more and more entrenched we only have a certain number of hours in the day to play video games and when every video game is fighting to be the one game that you play over and over over again forever then it's only logical that the overwhelming majority of them will fail oh well I'm sure Publishers will learn this lesson never what else happened this month uh well Xbox was still fighting to clench the Activision Blizzard King acquisition and fans were so invested that they were literally tracking Jim Ryan's jet to see where he was lobbying next I got to interview Final Fantasy 16's producer Yoshi P which kicked off a whole lot of discourse about the term jrpg and whether or not it's okay to use it and a report hints that E3 2023 might not happen because none of the Publishers have signed up to turn up the esa dismisses that report promising the event will happen and if history has taught us anything is that we can always trust the esa right March kicked off with one hell of an announcement we're getting some DLC for Elden ring N9 months later it's nowhere to be seen with fromsoft going out of their way to assure us that it won't be coming anytime soon you know what else wasn't coming anytime soon back then the suicide squad killed killed the Justice League we got a gameplay reveal for it in February and that bombed so badly that Jason sh of Bloomberg then reported a delay of the title which was later confirmed by Rock Steady themselves so why was this reveal received so badly well remember the whole live service tangent I went on just a second ago it turns out Rocksteady are following up on their iconic Batman Arkham Trilogy with a live service there was hope that the game might manage to sidestep many of the tropes and foibles that people have long grown tired of but the gameplay reveal gave people little hope as it looked like a rather generic offering the character kits and weapons in particular looking rather homogenized why is king shark using a minigun we asked why is Captain Boomerang using a sniper rifle he has boomerang in his name damn it these are all valid questions and the delay from May 2023 to February 2024 means we won't find out an answer to them until next year speaking of release dates Starfield locked in a final date after multiple delays it would arrive on September 6th and finally allow Bethesda G game studios to prove that Fallout 76 was just a little blip and that Bethesda magic was still alive and well I for one have complete faith in Todd We Trust March was also the conclusion to one of the more bizarre and unexpected stories of the Year eugi Naka Fame creator of Balon Wonderworld and the Lesser known Sonic the Hedgehog was arrested for insider trading the Japanese authorities alleged that he used his position at Square enx to learn about unannounced projects and then bought shares in the third party developers delivering those projects Naka did this with some buddies who each made various amounts from the Caper Naka himself pocketing some $145,000 and he would have got away with it too if it weren't for those pesky laws against insider trading he cooperated with authorities culminating in a guilty plea he was sentenced to a fine and a suspended jail sentence after his very public falling out with square enx and now his very public and humiliating Fall From Grace this is surely the last we'll see of the man who created one of the most iconic and memorable games of all time Balon Wonderworld but also Sonic I guess yes I've used that joke before but it is literally the last time I'll ever get to use it so you got to cut me some slack March wasn't all about the drama though some video games came out as well counter- strike 2 is probably the biggest one not that it's spoken about much outside of its absolutely Mammoth Community CS is still the most played game on Steam all the time and while Counterstrike 2 has certainly had its share of teething issues the engine upgrade is likely to ensure that CS will stay on top for many years to come bayetta Origins released on the switch that month it was a bit of a weird one Wong Fallen Dynasty arrived from Team ninja and it seemed to make a much smaller Splash than the Neo franchise had done years prior Dred was one of the Indie Darlings of 20123 an absolutely brilliant game that I can't recommend more highly and Resident Evil 4 remake arrived absolutely blowing the doors off the survival horror genre with Capcom finding a way to not only honor but improve on the source material though not everyone agrees with that perspective many people still feel as though the original was better The Last of Us Part One came to PC and it was the worst PC Port of 2023 a year filled with a business PC ports and stadia managed to somehow die again it was being maintained internally as a wh label Cloud streaming product that Google could onell but in March that plan also hit the Rocks meaning that both the consumer product and the businessto Business Solution were dead Google really found a way to lose money on a low barrier to entry video games platform that launched when people were locked inside their homes for 2 and A2 years you really have to give Phil Harrison credit where it's due no one could snatch defeat from the jaws of Victory like that man finally March finished on a very sad note with the sudden and wholly unexpected passing of Lance reic legend of the big and small screen in Productions like the Y and John Wick but known to many of us as Commander zala in Destiny many of us were in the tower that day just to honor his legacy he was a Titan both in game and in real life and he has sely missed oh look what a surprise E3 2023 is cancelled because no one signed up to turn up just like all those reports said I can't believe believe the esa let us astray oh well don't worry they say E3 will definitely be back in 2024 bad luck Jeff KY you ran a good race but you never bet against the esa April saw the reveal of the Asus Rog Ally and I got to say it's been really awesome to see the whole handheld PC market Blossom this year before then it was some lesser known windows-based devices but the steam deck obviously blew the category wide open and the Rog Ally is easily the best steam deck alternative on the market we'd later get the legion go and valve snuck in the cheeky little OLED refresh which in my view really cemented the deck as the best overall choice for handheld PC gaming it's just cool to see that this is a thing a space that was once exclusively controlled by Nintendo is now full of options and I for one make regular and liberal use of my steam deck because I love playing it when I get the chance new hardware categories rarely stick around in this business so I'm glad that this one did April also saw the release of the Mario movie Nintendo's first forray into feature films because damn it if Sonic can do it then Mario can do it too it turned out to be a much more divisive film than I would have anticipated critics putting it at a rotten 59% while audiences loved it delivering a resounding 95% approval rating I was firmly in that 95% I loved it Chris Bratt did a decent job Charlie Day and Keegan Michael K absolutely crushed it Seth Rogan absolutely sucked but Jack Black was You Know Jack Black and God bless him we all love him it was strange to read some of the reviews lambasting it for being too like the video game and to those people I would remind them that the B Hoskins Mario movie is right over there and you're welcome to watch it anytime you please sadly April also brought with it more layoffs this time at EA which made $5.7 billion in profit in 2023 they announced they would lay off 6% of their Workforce CEO Andrew Wilson took home $20 million that year someone who's good at budgeting please tell me which head count we should remove for the maximum cost saving release wise April was a bit of a slow month the excellent everspace 2 finally emerged from Early Access and did well for itself Minecraft Legends was a very weird weird third person strategy game that I was into but I'll admit that most other people were not Dead Island 2 finally dropped after enduring one of the most cursed development Cycles in the history of game development and it turns out it was okay it was a very solid seven out of 10 that people were happy to play through it did nothing new it did nothing particularly well its story was basically non-existent it was only around 10 hours long but it was properly fun it really was and given that everyone was kind of expecting it to really suck it was a pleasant surprise a very unpleasant surprise was Star Wars Jedi Survivor which launched on consoles and PC and was yet another brilliant game completely undone by horrific performance I didn't bother to play The Last of Us on PC so for me Jedi Survivor was the worst performing game I played all year it was truly abysmal to the point where I simply couldn't believe that respawn shipped it in this state but they did and it sold a boatload so there's your answer as to why companies do this the game would go on to receive multiple patches but as of the most recent one the game is still not in an acceptable State and Jal Foundry expect that the game will will not get another major patch meaning we're probably going to be stuck with this tursh performance forever truly a shame to see great games ship in this state I wish I could say I expect the trend to improve in future but I absolutely do not finally the hype for redfall is building it's out next month and IG did a Hands-On gameplay preview for it only the dislike ratio is really bad like people dislike the gameplay but the comment section is full of people being like we owe you an apology that's weird right I wonder if that'll make sense later on got him got them it's May the succession finale has aired and I ask you what is the point of living when there is no more succession to be had I still haven't found an answer to that question all these months later if it's corporate skull duggery I want luckily the video games industry is more than happy to deliver this is the month that Sony held a showcase revealing a slew of live service titles and subsequent reporting would revealed that Sony had green lit a total of 12 live services and was spending more than half of their research and development Budget on on live services in the words of Fallout 4 everyone disliked that the centerpiece of that live service push was Naughty Dogs The Last of Us online a live service experience based on the factions multiplayer mode from The Last of Us Part One Jason Shri of Bloomberg revealed that Bungie had visited nauy dog to give them feedback on the game and they were so underwhelmed by it that Sony put the project on ice nauy dog was still maintaining that the project was still alive and well he just needed some more time in the oven before it could be shown many of us know exactly how that story ends following this it was Sony's turn to do the layoffs thing exact numbers still haven't been made public but Sony let go people from both deviation games and final strike games a studio where they straight up canceled a new Sci-Fi IP they were working on Sony's layoffs pain was just getting started though but we wouldn't hear more about that until much later what we did hear about though endlessly was Xbox's attempts to acquire Activision Blizzard King and in the month of May that ambition hit a serious roadblock when the UK CMA blocked the deal for the CMA it wasn't the Call of Duty exclusivity which was cing up a lot of column Ines at the time but rather cloud gaming which was emerging as a new platform that Microsoft was uniquely positioned to dominate thanks to their survey infrastructure it was as the British say a Sticky Wicket sticky enough that it sent Microsoft scrambling to find a solution that would keep the deal Al flat they would find one but not for some time living their Ambitions in limbo maybe it was a bit of a blessing in disguise because May was the month that overwatch's senior leadership team turned on their webcams and delivered more of that disappointment that OverWatch fans had become more than accustomed to 2 you know how OverWatch 2 was entirely predicated on this ambitious PVE mode that delivered an all new exciting experience featuring character customization story beats and more well not so much blizzard announced that all of that was canned offering a consolation prize in the form of some very half-baked PVP events which and I cannot believe that this is true weren't even free you had to buy them on top of all of the overpriced skins in the cash shop it is difficult to think of a bag more fumbled than that of the OverWatch franchise the literal Game of the Year in 2016 an absolute phenomenon at its launch all of the momentum squandered through indecision over promising and underd delivering OverWatch still limps on enjoying the status as one of the lowest rated games in the history of steam but it feels as though it's on a parallel track now always looking sidelong at what might have been had blizzard been able to bet a steward this franchise what else happened in may let me think uh news of the switch 2 started to leak we'd get plenty more leaks before the year was out that Metal Gear Solid 3 remake was revealed Jeff key was not a fan of that one no surprises there tears of the Kingdom released and clearly nothing was going to top that for Game of the Year just give it to Nintendo right now there is no point in anyone else bothering Aon Numan sitting back in his office looking at those review scores thinking to himself GG easy what else happened this month I feel like I'm missing something or maybe two [Music] [Music] things [Music] this's a true story I was looking back at my analytics for the year and I was like why were my view counts so high in May and then I was like ah yes redfall and Golem released in the same [ __ ] month can you believe it Golem was the more laughable release because the very premise of a Golem game is in itself laughable I mean who asked for this nobody absolutely nobody but de delig entertainment thought it would be a good idea for some reason and having absolutely no idea what to do with the character they made it some Palace Intrigue driven RPG light with dialogue trees and decision making and Golem raises a bird as a personal pet and he has to her pigs into a pen for some reason and half of the game has no sound effects and when he falls to his death he usually just splatters on an invisible texture it was such a [ __ ] catastrophe of a video game that when I was talking to other reviewers prior to release we were all just stunned like how does this happen nobody really knows but we do know the Fallout Golem would go on to become one of the lowest rated games of the year because believe it or not there were worst games released in 2023 and dellic would shutter their in-house first party development focusing instead on publishing what's particularly crazy is that they had another Lord of the Rings game in the works and part of me is very sad to know that that project will never see the light of day I was more sad however to hear The Ballad of redfall the song of disappointment that rung out so loudly that it felt like the entire industry was United in grief to see a once great Studio brought so low Arcane had before this delivered the likes of Dishonored prey and prey Moon crash and now they were fighting out this absolutely abysmal broken unfinished video game possessed of none of the intelligence and sophistication for which Arcane games were always known it was so bad that on my suggestion it prompted people to apologize on mass to that poor IGN previewer as people had earlier thought that they were just really bad at the game whereas it turns out that the game was just really bad redf was by no means the worst game of 2023 but it was certainly the most tragic because Arcane had wasted their Blood Sweat and Tears making this for years and it was so irredeemably bad that most people myself included were calling for Arcane to just immediately drop support for the game and move on to the next thing for what it's worth Bethesda have said that they're sticking with it but with player counts measurable on one hand I question their long-term resolve a really fascinating output of the whole redfall Saga was Phil Spencer's very real and very raw reaction to it he took an interview with kind of funny a few days after the reviews dropped and Uncle Phil did not mince words he was disappointed in the result in himself and disappointed that they'd let fans down this was the interview where Phil admitted to the fact that Microsoft had lost the most important console generation and was running in third place today still an incredibly candid admission from a man in his position he coped a lot of flack for That interview but you know what I really respected him for it when 98% of what you get from corporate people is corporate [ __ ] it was nice to hear something real Sarah bond is already being positioned as the heira parent for the top job and I don't know how long Phil's got left but I do know that when he leaves I will miss him sure he does this for a pay packet you can tell he really really loves video games and they are precious few people at his level who you can truly say that [Music] of it's June the entire internet is focused on the tragic loss of that Titanic submersible but we as Gamers can't get over the fact that they drove that thing with an afterm Market Logitech PlayStation controller Elon Musk challenges Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight and then spends the following weeks cringely weaseling out of it and Colin Ballinger took the bad YouTube apology to a whole new level by putting it to music 16 million views 2.1 million dislikes those are some Call of Duty numbers right there June was a month that was in large part defined by its big releases Street Fighter 6 had everything to prove after the disappointment of Street Fighter 5 and like modern Capcom have been doing for the last few years they Rose to the occasion to delivering an entry that has put Street Fighter back at the very center of the fighting game circuit I didn't play any more than a few rounds of it as I'm too much of a [ __ ] boy to play fighting games but I'm glad it exists for those that love it what I did play a hell of a lot of was Diablo I pun intended I have thoughts on Diablo I many thoughts that I expect will make people pretty mad but I'm going to save those for my game of the year video coming soon and I know that even the thought of that game appearing on any game of the year list is already going to make people very mad but it's my list I can put whatever I like on it speaking of making people mad Final Fantasy 16 oh dear so this was an interesting chapter to go through I had in the past found myself in the minority perspective on certain releases but never before had I encountered such massive backlash to a review as I did with Final Fantasy 16 and I [ __ ] knew it was coming which is why I opened my review with a disclaimer like please do not care what I think about this game and I said it again at the end for good measure please ignore me go and buy this game if it interest you alas like Z goggles on radioactive man my disclaimers did nothing and people were very very mad at the fact that I did not like Final Fantasy 16 here's the thing though when that game actually released it turned out that my view was not as minority as first thought a lot of people didn't like Final Fantasy 16 particularly for its pacing its lack of a party system and the absence of RPG systems but a lot of people did love it and I want to say that I think history will actually be quite kind to Final Fantasy 16 in the same way that it's kind to 15 clearly the game has a lot of issues but it also has a lot of heart and creative business units free really put it all on the line here the highs are the highest in the history of the franchise and that alone carries it a great distance so I'm glad that Final Fantasy 16 made so many people happy even if it wasn't for me but on the plus side I got to beat Ben star and let me tell you that is one Charming [ __ ] this month also saw the FTC bring suit against Microsoft hoping to double down on the CMA blockage of the Activision Blizzard King acquisition it was a lot of the arguments that we' heard in the past though argued less persuasively by the FTC resulting in the judge ruling against them the FTC are still in the appeals process to this day I think someone needs to tell them the horse has already left the barn finally and most worryingly for the future this was the month that embracer announced that a $2 billion funding deal had fallen through the swedish-based publisher had spent the past 3 years buying up every studio and IP it could get its hands on including the actual Lord of the Rings IP from the tolken estate the spending spree happened on a tab that embracer thought would be picked up by the Saudis but when that deal collapsed and Ashen faed embracer leadership group broke the news announcing that extensive cost cutting and layoffs would be required it is really gross that something like this can be allowed to happen perfectly good Studios Hoover it up only to then be shut down months later while embracer tries to plug the massive hole in its balance sheet over the remainder of 2023 embracer would shut up more than half a dozen Studios and lay off over a thousand people warning the entire time that more and deeper Cuts were on the way it's still unclear if braer will even survive the next few years but given how rocky the outlook for 2024 is the Smart money says that Embraces troubles are far from over it's barbin Heimer time with the MCU crumbling people were aching for some real Capital C Cinema and what could be more Cinema than a double feature one part a deep character study centered on a complex man whose Reckless ambition loosed unspeakable Horrors on the world and the other won an Oppenheimer movie this was the month that I took off for a vacation I hadn't actually had a proper holiday since the pandemic began all those years ago so it was nice to visit Europe during a once in a generation heat wve I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could not go to Sicily as originally planned because the airport burned down still I had a good enough time and this is actually when Austin started doing some content on the channel you guys liked it so much that you didn't want me to come back thanks for that by the way appreciate it I I did come back though but as a compromise Austin also remained a regular feature on the channel and I've been super proud to have his stuff appear here because he really does fantastic work just don't tell him that I ever said that okay Austin reviewed the two biggest games that released in July EXO Primal the super weird live service Co-op dinosaur shooter from Capcom at the time of riding this was averaging 150 Peak concurrent players on Steam so it looks as though capcom's unbroken winning streak has finally been broken and no we do not count the Resident Evil multiplayer games we are all in agreeance that they do not exist Remnant 2 was the other big one to drop this month following up from the sleeper hit Remnant From the Ashes a few years prior it was really great to see this one pop off in the way that it did review scores were super positive play counts were very healthy hell the game even got a few Game of the Year nominations which is fantastic to see it's a franchise that deserves more attention so it's fantastic to see it get some I do expect that gearbox will double down on Remnant in the future on the news front the FTC trial continued resulting in some very salacious outputs at one point Sony's lawyers tried to redact a document so as to hide the development costs of both Horizon forbidden West and the last of his part two only they didn't use a proper redacting pen just a stock standard Sharpie as such we could just read through the ink and we learned that Horizon cost some $212 million to make while The Last of Us Part Two cost a cool 220 million we'd learn more development costs later on but the source for that reveal was not an improperly used Sharpie when Microsoft had beaten back the FTC Sony could see the writing on the wall and so they cut the deal that Jim Ryan was loed to make guaranteeing PlayStation owners access to Call of Duty if and when the Activision Blizzard King deal was finalized it's understood that The Binding agreement expires towards the back end of the decade and it's anyone's guess what Microsoft plans to do with it after that being 2023 the nft bubble had burst long ago so it was hilarious to see Sega finally get the message they had earlier said that theyd plann to invest heavily in blockchain and pay to earn games but suddenly an epiphany had come over them blockchain games were now boring and they would no longer pursue them funny how management only comes to that conclusion after the bottom falls out of the market undeterred Ubisoft are still holding true to their nft Ambitions and I'm not talking about quartz by the way that nft program that they announced a great Fanfare and then hoped we'd all forget about I'm talking about a brand new nft game that they announced in July called Champions tactics goria Chronicles the review trailer for the game has been taken down as it was spanned with dislikes but the website is still up so I guess it's still in development I look forward to its release and its subsequent delisting what else uh France rioted against systemic Injustice and Emanuel macron blamed video games a comment he'd later apologize for because politicians are now smart enough to know that you do not mess with online communities the Koreans rating board was basically shut down after it was revealed to be embezzling funds and running a crypto mining operation and gains with gold went to live on a farm with the other retired subscription Services Microsoft clearly unwilling to deal with the bullying that I and many others gleefully dished out each and every month when it was time to read out the monthly haul to be fair game pass is literally the best deal in video games providing a very stark contrast to what had become the worst deal in video games rest in peace Games with Gold you are gone but you will never be forgotten you licked a dead spider dead spider August time the Gran Turismo movie is out and to this day I've still never met anyone that's actually seen it then again much the same could be said of Avatar too so who knows how people are spending their time Behind Closed Doors game happened this month and it was another chance for some [ __ ] loser to rush the stage and yell inan nonsense into a microphone it's unclear if this or the reformed Rabbi kid from last year was what stirred Jeff key to action but security was significantly tightened up at this year's game awards so we didn't have anyone up on stage who didn't belong there except for maybe Timothy shalamay Sony saw the success of the Nintendo switch and the emerging handheld PC market and said to themselves we can do a worse version of that meet the PlayStation portal a handheld that only does remote play like that's it just remote play it doesn't even Cloud stream from ps+ because it doesn't have a browser installed also it doesn't have Bluetooth so if you want to listen to half decent audio you need to Fork out for a pair of Sony's overpriced pulse earbuds it's perfectly fine if you need a device to keep playing on when your significant other kicks you off the TV so they can watch their stories but it's a bizarrely narrowly focused product and you have to hope that future firmware updates open up some new functionality Rockstar continued their near unbroken track record of disappointing re-releases and remasters by announcing red Dead one for PlayStation and switch leaving PC players firmly in the Lurch yet again nothing new there speaking of disappointment bware they announced layoffs the announcement was one of the more slimy justifying it through various business buzzword that would have made Jack donie proud caught up in this wave of exits were a number of very talented and very seasoned veterans like Riders who go back as far as balers gate 2 in the original Dragon Age it was a real body blow to the studio as evidence by BioWare staff venting their frustration all over social media BioWare is still hard at work on the next dragon Age game and after that a mass effect and you get the feeling that both of those titles have to hit their target and hit it hard cuz if they don't then Bow's future prospects look very Bleak indeed August always marks the beginning of the release season and this year it was no different with a surprisingly disappointing Atlas Fallen the unsurprisingly excellent Shadow Gambit the throwback inspired bomb Rush cyber Funk and the indie game of the year winner sea of stars Immortals of AVM also dropped and sadly it bombs so badly that the studio had to announce layoffs soon after that wayfinder 2 hit the rocks in immediately performing so badly that publisher digital extremes would soon jettison not only that title but their entire publishing label armed core 6 delivered in Spades Reviving The Mex genre as only from soft are able to do but the biggest release of the month and indeed of the entire year was a sequel to a Dungeons and Dragon crpg released more than 20 years ago Boulders Gate 3 sat in Early Access for some 2 years and it feels like nobody paid it any mind but when it launched into 1.0 and people got to see what the [ __ ] larion had been cooking they were absolutely Blown Away myself included the game were going to achieve a peak concurrent player count of 875,000 people on Steam making one of the most played offline single player games in history it would prompt Microsoft to make a rare exclusion to their Ironclad policy of Series S parody allowing larion to ship the game to the lowest spe console without the inclusion of Split Screen Co-op it would go on to win a slew of Game of the Year Awards including the actual game of the year award and most importantly it resulted in a lot of very horny posting on Main as Boulders Gate 3 became the safe space for everyone to freely share their King be it goth girlfriend lizard dominatrix Hellfire Helen or for the anime enjoyers tentacle monster I have a lot more to say about this game and I'll hope you'll forgive me if I save it for my game of the year video it is unsurprisingly very highly ranked on my list you may need to upgrade your PC for this game but it's got a lot of great stuff going on in it and the fans are responding awesome September bro where the [ __ ] do you even begin with September let's knock off some small stuff first beesus head of publishing reiterated that they will stick with redfall and that it would be a good game one day okay would have been nice if it was good before you sold it to us for $70 but whatever Elder Scroll 6 is confirmed to be an early pre-production yeah no [ __ ] thanks for revealing the logo 4 years ago that was a real low point in the already very sorted history video game hype Cycles the switch 2 rumors were heating up with multiple reports that Nintendo was showcasing the hardware at Gamescom the month prior Nintendo would go on to later deny these reports but that denial Rings a little Hollow in the face of how well sourced those reports were layoffs continued in fact they really build up some momentum in September Riot games Cut staff as did Minecraft Legends and home World developer Blackbird interactive Embrace a group SL jobs over at gearbox and even went so far as to confirm that they're actively looking for a buyer of gearbox valtion who had last year ship the disastrously bad Saints Row reboot was shuted ending nearly three decades of game development history and Mimi games who just put out Shadow Gambit decided to close up shop siden the ongoing stress of trying to hustle for financing in an industry where that was becoming increasingly difficult outside of that there were plenty of video games released June spice Wars hit 1.0 and landed with a thud as many of the promised features simply weren't there the crew motorest sold surprisingly well for Ubisoft lies of PE would go on to become the year's best Souls like and not only because fromsoft didn't release one that year payday 3 would take the title as the most borked launch of 2023 totally unplayable for weeks to the point where people just went back to playing Payday 2 and debut indie game of the year winner cocoon launched to a small but very enthusiastic reception speaking of borked launches this was also the month that cyber Punk Phantom Liberty arrived the one and only expansion we were ever going to get for a game that basically wrote the book on bork launchers well that in Fallout 76 of course city project red had spent the better part of 2 years fixing the game but they hadn't really added much in the way of new content the Phantom Liberty expansion was the first new content drop and it was truly excellent a spy Thriller headline by none other than Idris Elba a bond inspired soundtrack to match but oddly enough it wasn't the new campaign that captured headlines but rather the improvements to the base game update 2.0 added Myriad new gameplay improvements like redesigned perk trees of vehicle combat new Mission types and tons more it was a very thorough reworking of significant portions of the game and the results were truly spectacular The Edge Runners anime was a moment when many people had discovered cyber Punk for the first time but back then the game was still quite unfinished here in Phantom Liberty City project red delivered something much closer to what was initially promised and so say what you will about the ethics of that Journey cyberpunk 2077 is now inarguably a pretty remarkable video game offering up stories and immersion that few other RPGs can match speaking of which [Music] Starfield was Bethesda game Studio's first new IP in over two decades since they didn't actually invent the Fallout IP they acquired that for years to have been saying that he wanted to make a space game but the technology did not exist yet for his vision it is still unclear exactly what he meant by but if he's referring to Starfield Central technology loading screens then we've had those for a while now Starfield was revealed some time ago and met such a lukewarm reaction that Microsoft decided to delay the title considerably when it reemerged it did look a lot better and an absolutely brilliant 45 minute long showcase at the Summer Games first in June really sold us everyone was on board the Starfield hype train someone got a little too ahead of the pack though one dude who worked in a logistics Distribution Center was putting out videos of him not only playing the game early but also selling copies of the game out of his car and uploading proof of his crimes to social media he would unsurprisingly get caught and arrested never a good idea to film one's crimes best of luck with the sentencing my dude with that little drama out of the way it was time for the reviews and they were glowing a mighty 85 on open critic nines and 10 across the board it was declared a masterpiece bethesda's finest work and the greatest space game ever made however there was that IGN review that scored it a 7 out of 10 and the gam spot which also scored it a 7 out of 10 surely the biased media applying their XBox tax yet again cow Towing to their Sony pay masters imagine scoring Starfield a 7 out of 10 impossible but then the game came out and everyone got to play it for themselves and what transpired after that was one of the most fascinating discourses I've ever seen in my time covering games the reception at launch was euphoric people were loving Starfield ws and all but as time wore on and people sunk more hours into the game that perspective would change drastically at that point people began to complain about how Barren many of the planets were the reused assets at planets that were apparently undiscovered and uninhabited the toothless futurism the weak writing the inventory management and above all the loading screens it got to the point where it became very very difficult to find a kind word about Starfield anywhere and that's a situation that persists to this day if Fallout 76 was the moment that everyone woke up and realized that bethesda's technology was woly out of date Starfield was the moment that everyone realized that bethesda's design and storytelling was woefully out of date right now the game sits at mostly negative on Steam just 31% of recent reviews giving it a thumbs up that is a pretty disastrous result for one of the most hyped games of the past decade and will no doubt prompt a lot of introspection back at Bethesda HQ it's clear that some new technology new ideas and new leadership are needed if the Elder Scroll 6 is going to deliver and you can bet that Microsoft are going to push hard for that because even though Starfield sold a boatload of Game Pass subscriptions it was also a bit of a black black eye for Microsoft as they fight to reset the narrative surrounding the Xbox and its library of games but Starfield wasn't the only black eye that Xbox coped that month because during the FTC trial a Microsoft lawyer accidentally uploaded a bunch of documents that had stuff hidden in the metadata that stuff was Xbox's strategy for the next half decade for real the amount of stuff that fell out of that leak was staggering it detailed plans for a miden console refresh the main selling point being a newly designed Xbox controller that looked to emulate the haptics employed in PlayStation's dual sense the leak also contained high level specs for the nextg Xbox the one planned to be out in around 2028 as well as information on Microsoft's ambitious plans to incorporate Cloud technology into that console generation we also got a look at a list of unannounced Bethesda projects including an oblivion remaster a Fallout 3 remaster something called Doom year zero Dishonored 3 as well as a licensed IP which ended up being the recently announced Blade game from Arcane the leak also contained confidential information about Game Pass such as how much Microsoft were willing to pay to get titles onto the service and most salacious of all it revealed a high level discussion between Phil Spencer and his peers about a potential Bid to Buy Nintendo we all laughed at that one the same way that Nintendo's board laughed at Microsoft all those years ago Phil did respond to the leak calling it disappointing but let's be real it was not particularly damaging it may have taken the surprise factor out of a number of upcoming projects but it didn't reveal so much as to be ruinous December would be the month where we'd see that sort of leak more on that later as if there wasn't enough going on in September this was also the month that Unity decided it would become the main character of every social media platform as their ill faded plan to charge a fee to developers based on game installations was rolled out this was quite possibly one of the stupidest swiftest and Most Wanted destructions of brand cash I have ever seen the proposal was so illc conceived that it took developers like 30 seconds to see massive gaping holes in and forcing Unity to begin haphazardly issuing clarifications most of which were unclear and contradictory it caused a mass Exodus of game developers some of whom were well into the development cycles of their current games but they still just pulled up stumps right then and there and committed to rebuilding their game in another engine because they could no longer trust Unity it led to multiple lawsuits o to its retroactive applications on games already in the market and even saw unity's officers close owing to death threats made against certain staff the fural would continue for a few weeks until the inevitable walking back occurred apology jpegs you know the drill the one silver lining out of this was that the CEO John rello got the ass and if you know anything about this man especially his time as the CEO of EA back at the peak of its [ __ ] then you will no doubt be very happy to see the back of this man as well and that was September one [ __ ] month give me strength we've got three months left October began with a big surprise Jim Ryan the boss man of PlayStation was out he was retiring saying that the commute between his work in the states and his home in the UK was taking its toll and he wanted to spend more time with his family it was strange timing Jim had only been in the role for a handful of years and given that PlayStation was doing very well for itself you could definitely have guessed that he might have stayed in that role for a few more years yet still he went with Sony's blessing and the industry's best wishes Jim definitely wasn't one of the cool kids he never cultivated a cult of personality like Spencer Reggie or to a lesser extent Shawn Laden but he was a very effective Steward of the PlayStation brand delivering a very successful console launch in the PS5 and a number of very high quality first party titles he was huffing a little too much of the live service wacky tobacky but outside of that he was all right in my book no word yet on who might succeed him I guess we'll find out in the New Year there is one Theory floating around that Jim was only sticking around to lead Sony in their fight against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King as fly as Jim fought that battle October was the month he lost it because after Microsoft had beaten the FTC and had made big Cloud related concessions to the UK CMA the CMA approved the deal Paving the way for Microsoft to finalize the transaction and that's exactly what they did on October 13th Microsoft boss SAA and Adella signed the dotted line taking possession of Activision Blizzard King for the eyeing sum of nearly $69 billion nice it was one of the biggest commercial Acquisitions in history a stark reminder of just how big video games had gotten and how important they were to the tech Giants as they chart the next phase of their growth to celebrate Microsoft put out a flashy trailer showcasing all the new IP they now owned think Call of Duty World of Warcraft Diablo Candy Crush and more as well as confirmation that we shouldn't expect all this stuff to hit Game Pass anytime soon but we can definitely expect it to happen at some point in the future imagine getting the next CoD every year every Diablo expansion a World of Warcraft subscription and every other new release from blizzard like their upcoming Survival game all for $10 a month that is pretty [ __ ] wild I don't know how sustainable that is but I guess we're all all about to find out if September was the month where industry layoffs picked up momentum then October was the month that they crescendoed epic kicked things off with an announcement that despite maintaining the most popular game in the world and owning the most ubiquitous aleaa games engine epic was losing money and as such they had to slash some 900 jobs the very next month fortnite will go on to achieve its highest single day player count in history 44 million people Indie publisher Team 17 would lay off stuff soon after that as would Telltale Games a studio that had been reformed after being orbit dissolved years prior dang the studio behind the excellent Boomerang X would close their doors unable to secure funding for their next project and embrace a group was still at it cutting jobs at balers gate remastered developer beam dog as well as Tom Raider developer Crystal Dynamics things really hit home though when Naughty Dog makers of Uncharted and The Last of Us also began cutting staff contractors were the focus many of those contracts being cut short across various disciplines but mostly focused on QA we'd learn a little later on why naughty dog was making these sorts of reductions creative assembly would also cut jobs and there was actually a reasonable explanation for that one the studio had worked for years to develop a live service multiplayer shooter called hyenas and just as it was on the eve of its release Sega pulled the pin on the project canceling it all together it was rumored to be the most expensive game that Sega had ever green lit but as is the way with all live Services The Upfront development cost is just the beginning of the costs that the project will incur feedback from various betas was lukewarm at be so it seems as though Sega accurately read the room on this one still very sad to see the work of so many developers just tossed out like a used napkin October was another massive month of releases on the lower end of the spectrum that King Kong game came out we all had a bit of fun with that for a few days on social media some real games released too though Assassin's Creed Mirage wasn't to my personal taste but most people really liked it accepting its flaws But ultimately just glad to see Ubisoft putting out an AC game that wasn't 600 hours long fora Motorsport was a little more disappointing than many were expecting owing to some big problems with campaign progression Lords of the the Fallen looked incredible but played less than incredibly City skylines 2 gave Jedi Survivor a run for its money as the worst performing PC Port of 2023 and the jury is still out on who might have emerged as the Victor in that one while jant was a lovely little surprise channeling the exploration and Vibes of games like joury Chris and abzu Spider-Man 2 was one of the big ones and it was as excellent as everybody expected it to be though it did leave less of an impact owing to the fact that the first game was a tough act to follow that leaves Mario wonder and Allen wake 2 two games that I have a lot to say about but again I'll save those two for my game of the year video the uglier they are the harder they fall right November began with some truly tragic news Snoop Dog was given up smoke he asked for privacy during this difficult time and we gave it to him because we understood when we later learned that it was a marketing gimmick for a smokeless fireplace we weren't even mad because sometimes you just got to respect the hustle that a good marketing department is capable of unfortunately there were other things for us to get mad about this month like Bungie's sudden axing of nearly 100 staff just a short time after they were acquired by Sony promising back then that layoffs were firmly off the table and that considerable sums would be poured into long-term staff retention the layoffs were within every discipline and at every level except for Senior Management of course because perished the thought that Business Leaders might take a dose of their own medicine the biggest and most surprising loss was Michael salvator veteran composer from the Halo days who were go on to become responsible for some of Destiny's most iconic music if someone that tenured and that talented wasn't safe from the layoffs AXS and how could any Bungie staff ever consider their employment secure that uncertainty has led to a spiraling of morale at the studio with Bungie leadership taking the Razer to all manner of programs and initiatives in an effort to reig in costs apparently Destiny 2 missed its most recent Financial targets by some 45% and player engagement took a steep nose dive after the disappointing lightfall expansion failed to retain players post launch Bungie would go on to delay the final shape expansion to June of next year and ruber has it that their extraction shooter Marathon was also delayed into 20125 all of this rejigging is apparently an effort to retain their independence as IGN report that Sony has a clause built into the contract that allows them to assume full control if Bungie Falls below certain performance targets will Bungie be able to keep their head above water we'll find out in 2024 I suppose another month another round of layoffs this time at digital extremes who let go 30 people in charge of their publishing label Embrace a group would shut a free radical design the studio in charge of the time Splitters Revival Unity cut jobs as well no doubt as Fallout from their disastrous efforts to impose that stupid install tax Amazon would cut a full 180 people from its games division as it focused on giving away more free games or something okay then and Ubisoft would round things out by cutting over 120 star from various studios in more upbeat news BlizzCon happened and it was actually a pretty good showing revealing a Diablo 4 four expansions sler for late next year as well as a new three expansion long Saga for World of Warcraft wow has been getting its mojo back these past couple of years after a string of disappointing expansions and design decisions and that recovery has been helped in no small part by the huge success of wow classic for once Blizzard's future is starting to look a little brighter OverWatch 2 notwithstanding since this was also the month when the OverWatch leag began the process of voting itself out of existence triggering a $120 million bill that Phil Spencer would have to pick up a nice welcoming gift from old mate Bobby conic this was also the month when those Bethesda employees tried to Gaslight steam users into enjoying Starfield a truly hilarious moment within the already very humorous annals of Bethesda customer support November was also the last big month of video game releases RoboCop Rogue city was super weird but also kind of awesome if you didn't think too hard about it the Talis principal 2 was a critical darling for Crow team and publisher devolver a digital like a dragon giden was a short and sharp touch point for fans who'd been missing quu and speaking of short Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3's campaign was so short that it became the butt of a joke at the game awards Chris judge absolutely Bringing Down the House with that one Speaking of the game awards pew pew pew December has one big item on the calendar and that item is Jeff Key's annual trailerama aka the game ads aka the game awards to this point I would say that views on the event have been fairly mixed some people viewing it cynically as nothing more than a marketing exercise other people myself included giving Jeff the benefit of the doubt understanding that putting together these events is expensive so you got to compromise with some ads fair enough this year though this was the year that everyone agreed that Jeff really messed up big time and that this event was every bit the cynical ad driven Revenue focused event that its biggest attractors had long accused it of being a Relentless Cavalcade of trailers broken up by speeches so short that it felt like the music was already playing by the time the award recipient got to the top of the stairs and that's if they got the chance to even do that since many of the most important Awards weren't even handed out out just quickly caned through off stage so we could get back to the fortnite ads and gacha commercials given how unanimous the feedback has been I'm all bit certain we'll see some big changes to this event next year because contrary to what many other people say I do believe that Jeff key really does care about video games but yeah 2023 was a low point that I hope will look back on as a nidea rather than as a template December was also the month that we got our first proper look at GTA 6 the reveal happened a little earlier than planned as someone had uploaded the trailer early with BT see blaz and across it Rockstar would roll with the punches uploading the trailer to their own YouTube channel and smashing all sorts of Records in the process at the time of riding the trailer has massed 159 million views or roughly 25% the viewership of your average Mr Beast video GTA 6 is all but confirmed to be launching in q1 2025 which means that Publishers are going to be very reluctant to announce their games for a release anywhere near there expect a very quiet January February and March as Publishers clear the decks for what will undoubtedly be the big biggest selling game of not only that year but this entire console generation and probably the Next Generation as well in other news nauy dog finally bit the bullet and canceled that Last of Us online we've been hearing reports of it being shelved long ago and these job cuts from earlier in the year were directly related to that since the QA people had nothing to QA Sony seems to be putting the brakes on a lot of its live service Ambitions delaying multiple projects and canceling others we can't say for certain but it feels like a good move because if there's one thing this industry certainly does not need more of at this point it's live Services December had two big surprises left for us the first was the combination of one of the most obvious scams in video games history I'm talking of course about the day before the open world MMO survival zombie game that wasn't an open world wasn't an MMO had like no survival elements and only like six zombies in the entire asset store bought map honestly you probably heard about all of this very recently as it's been covered extensively by anyone with a YouTube account myself included rather than give you the a bridge version I'll just link to my video below tldr game was a total scam Studio shut itself down 4 days after launch game is being taken offline in January of next year the last big surprise of 2023 was unfortunately not a pleasant one just a week before Christmas Insomniac makers of ration and Clank and the recent Spider-Man games was hacked in a ransomware attack the hackers demanded $2 million and if they didn't get it they said they'd released some 1.6 terab of information including the personal information of Insomniac employees Sony didn't pay them and so sadly the hackers did exactly what they said they would do the resulting data leak was one of the biggest in video games history showcasing tons of Wolverine gameplay the full plot of the game and even a playable build which people were eventually able to crack and play for themselves this is in itself a real shame as Insomniac will now forever be denied the chance to reveal the game on their own terms and it also really colors the discourse around this game allowing people to jump to ill-informed conclusion based on impr progress work sadly that was not all that was leaked insomniac's upcoming Suite of projects is now public including a Venom game similar in size and scope to Miles Morales Spider-Man 3 is of course on the way we're not getting a wolverine 2 instead we're getting a full-blown X-Men game toward the back end of the decade as well as a new Ratchet and Clank game in 2023 and Beyond Insomniac will finally turn their attention to some new IP but that wasn't all the league also revealed a canceled multiplayer Spider-Man title it revealed the sales figures and revenues for various Insomniac games and it also revealed the budgets for future projects and it turns out that Spider-Man 3 will cost more than $300 million to develop kicking off plenty of discourse on the sustainability of the AAA Games model it was a fascinating look behind the curtain sure but it was also from a source that knowingly and deliberately put Insomniac staff in danger by leaking their personal information that made reporting on that stuff very difficult prompting a lot of introspection on the part of the games press regardless that information is now out and if any Silver Lining is to be drawn from this it's that the sensitivity with which people handle this information is a testament to just how much respect people have for Insomniac and the incredible work that they do and on that rather Dow notes let's bring this [Music] [Music] home when we look back on 2023 what might we say about the year that was and what it into the broader evolution of video games for me personally I do think we need to face into the fact that this was without a doubt one of the best years in video games history when it comes to the quality of releases Boulders Gate 3 Resident Evil 4 remake Spider-Man 2 Mario Wonder Allen W 2 Dave the diver cocoon dredge hell even fortnite hit new levels of greatness with its new Lego themed Survival game mode thing point is this was an Oldtimer and no matter what the context for that might be it doesn't change the fact that we got some very very good video games this year in fact we got a lot of them but that context really matters over 9,000 game jobs vanished this year leaving our industry objectively worse than it was 12 months ago I think it's perfectly fine to celebrate all of these incredible games so long as we're also willing to recognize that many of the people who contributed to them are no longer working in this field it's encouraging to see that for the most part people are alive to that reality and sympathetic to it consumers being aware of crunch for example has had a profound impact on how Studios manage their people so we can only hope that consumers being more informed about games industry job security will encourage Studios and Publishers to treat their people less disposa but that is optimistic as economic headwinds indicate that 2024 will continue many of the more disappointing Trends we've seen in 2023 there's not a whole lot we as consumers can do about that but keeping a spotlight on it and approaching these situations with compassion is certainly a good start that's what I've been trying to do and that's what I'll keep trying to do here on this new show every every week I feel very lucky to be able to cover this industry that I love so much and so appreciative that you guys all tune in each week so I can keep doing it Austin and stew are both as Central to this operation as I am as literally zero videos would hit the channel without them so a huge thank you to them for all their work and support I will say that I have pretty big plans for this week in video games in 2024 I've actually already hired someone to help make those plans a reality we're going to be working in the background for a few months to set things up but when it's all up and running I hope you'll join us for what I think is going to be some pretty cool stuff and so ladies and gentlemen for the very last time in 2023 this was this week in video games thank you for stopping by and I hope you'll come back again when we recommence at the back end of January next year have a happy New Year and all the best to you and [Music] yours so earlier this month I went to LA for the game awards and I was there for like a week working in my hotel room when I wasn't you know catching up with people having meanss Etc usually I bring a laptop with me but this time thanks to this video sponsor spor gigabyte orus I brought something a little different and when I say little I mean very little this is a custom build from oris's PC Builder a guy who goes by the name of simple mods on YouTube he built this Starfield themed Mini ITX PC that is so small that it took up just a quarter of my carry-on luggage here it is set up in my hotel room as you can see keyboard mouse my mic to record audio a portable screen a portable Command Center for when I'm on the road and want to play games and make content without compromise and that like compromise is what makes this so great even though this thing is smaller than a shoe box it has at the heart of it gigabyt GeForce RTX 460 OC lowprofile graphics card a very small form factor GPU that will still deliver the power and features you want and expect from a 40 series GPU we're talking rate tracing deal S3 Nvidia reflex all of that is possible with the 4060 even though it's only about like the size of your hand the most important part of the small form factor is the motherboard a gigabyte B7 760i orus Pro it supports 12th 13th and 14th gen Intel core processors has Wi-Fi 6E dual M2 slots and it supports ddr5 memory if you're considering a mini ITX build then this motherboard really covers all the bases which is absolutely what you'd expect from gigabyte given their extensive range of motherboards are always going to meet your build needs as for the design simple mods decided to theme it around Starfield because it would look cool and it does he did some custom work on the LZ mod Mini ITX chassis giving it a finish and some stylings that any member of constellation would appreciate he actually did a full build video for it as well so if you'd like to see how he put all this together then I'll leave a link to his video below now I don't want to spoil anything but gigabyte orus are going to be sticking around for a while here on the channel we're going to be chatting sometime next year about how we'll work together but long story short they want to support what we're doing here and I'm really excited to have them on board because I've been buying gigabyte stuff for literally decades they make fantastic kit and I'm very proud to feature that stuff on this channel if you'd like to check out gigabyte's industry leading range of PC Hardware then I've left a link to them Below in the description thanks gigabyte orus for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching [Music] it

Channel: Skill Up

Views: 598,531

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, ps4, xbox, xbox one, xbox series, ps5, pc, nintendo, nintendo switch, gaming news, news, new games, new games this week, new games this month, PS+, games with gold, gamepass, free games, ps+ games, PS5, Switch, This week in videogames, skillup, sony, microsoft, Gamepass, release date, delay, game, new releases, review, starfield, reviews, metacritic, trailers, trailer, opencritic, the game awards 2023, baldur's gate 3, gaming news 2023

Id: 26KzkLymUb4

Length: 65min 21sec (3921 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023