The State of Gaming Heading Into 2024

In the ever-expanding video game industry, the nostalgia of remakes, the allure of expansive open-world experiences and the transformative power of live service development have become integral to modern gaming. From the revival of classics like Resident Evil 4 to the challenges faced by ambitious projects such as Starfield, the industry continues to navigate uncharted territory while the age-old console war rages on. Before diving into 2024, let’s recount the elements that defined this year in gaming as we look ahead to what’s next.

The Art of the Remake

Whether it’s another pair of “Chicago” Air Jordan 1s or the latest retelling of Frankenstein, remakes offer opportunities to introduce new audiences to era-defining content while also providing longtime fans the opportunity to relive their favorite moments.

Activision Blizzard

In 2023, gamers again traversed the vast lands of Azeroth with World of Warcraft expanding its WoW Classic series. Features included hardcore realms, where characters would be deleted upon dying, as well as the newly-designed Season of Discovery, which reimagined the game’s beginning with new content and a slow-rising level cap.

Where Activision Blizzard succeeded with WoW, it failed with Call of Duty. As an annual release, CoD operates at an extremely fast pace, limiting the opportunity for growth between its titles. With CoD: Modern Warfare III, it built upon the reboot of the Modern Warfare series that started in 2019 but served up a campaign that fans have deemed CoD’s worst to date thanks to its substance-lacking missions and recycled locations. While its multiplayer was initially embraced for revisiting maps from the highly-regarded CoD: Modern Warfare 2 from 2009, it ultimately was received as feeling more like DLC for the last Modern Warfare as opposed to a stand-alone experience.

However, it was Resident Evil 4 that defined the art of the remake in 2023. Preceding remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 set a high standard for the series and this time around, the stars again aligned and RE4 earned a spot as one of the industry’s best releases of the year. Capcom’s ability to unlock the potential of its 2005 masterpiece with quality of life upgrades including being able to move while shooting, smoother inventory management and less clunky controls. On top of this, its expertly-crafted environments and fine-tuned pacing should serve as the blueprint for remakes moving forward.

Cd Projekt Red

As we consider what’s next for remakes, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is poised to run with the momentum that Square Enix found with Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2020 by reimagining the original Final Fantasy VII from 1997. Per usual, Nintendo is capitalizing on its beloved catalog with both Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Luigi’s Mansion 2 returning in 2024. Down the line, much-anticipated remakes of Silent Hill 2 and The Witcher are on the way as remakes continue to play a major role in the industry.

Open-World Mania

In a time where our lives are more digital than ever, it’s only natural that many wish for their virtual explorations to be just as grand as those based in reality. Nowadays, the “open world” concept has become a buzzword shared in every other showcase at industry presentations as studios take on the strenuous task of building worlds that are not only expansive but engaging too. Though, as this year made abundantly clear, when it works, it works.

Nintendo again earned fan praise and critical acclaim with its The Legend of Zelda series as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom embraced open-world design and invited gamers to make it their own space. From ingenious engineering to environments rich with substance, ToTK overcame the near-insurmountable expectations set by its predecessor by creating a highly replayable experience. Elsewhere, Insomniac Games returned to the Spider-Verse with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 inviting players to spin webs across the open-world version of Marvel’s New York while blending the stories of Peter Parker and Miles Morales into an epic adventure.

Nintendo

For every success in the open world space, there are more than a few misfires. Heading into 2023, Bethesda Softworks, the masterminds behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, were gearing up to present one of the most-anticipated games of the decade — Starfield. The idea of “Skyrim in space,” as director Todd Howard described it, had many gamers hooked before they even pressed play. In execution, the void of space felt all-too-real as this enormous, procedurally-generated sandbox of over 1,000 planets stretched the worldbuilding too thin. While the depth of other gameplay elements such as ship creation and character customization was embraced, it serves as a prime example of how open-world design can do more harm than good if not utilized appropriately.

As developers continue to push the concept to its limits, there are sure to be many hits (and misses) to come. For 2024, Ubisoft is readying Star Wars Outlaws with its signature worldbuilding magic found throughout the Assassin’s Creed franchise while Sony and Team Ninja embrace the age of the samurai with Rise of the Ronin. Should the year not live up to the hype, gamers will remain ready to explore Vice City once again as Grand Theft Auto 6 — arguably the most-anticipated video game of all time — is right around the corner in 2025.

Live Service Longevity

Long gone are the days of a game’s initial release telling its entire story. From bug fixes to expansions and in some cases, the addition of entirely new games, downloadable content has kept games like World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto 5 relevant for decades. As opposed to series churning out sequels, live service games have grown in popularity, capitalizing on DLC as a means to continuously refresh the core game.

Epic Games

A prime example of perpetual reinvention is Epic Games’ Fortnite. As each new season and chapter is presented, the game offers a new flow while maintaining its core identity. Pivoting from one map, weapon and mechanic to another, booting up Fortnite often feels completely different with each new iteration introduced. On top of this, its knack for collaborations has brought forth a game where LeBron James can team up with a dog dressed in Balenciaga to take on Goku and Master Chief. To conclude 2023, it even released its own fully-fledged title in LEGO Fortnite as a free-to-play survival crafting adventure within the original Fortnite game.

On the other hand, live service offers a chance at redemption. When CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, its performance problems on consoles and lack of polish had many gamers deem it as unfinished and a flop. Following a commitment from CDPR to improving the title, each update saw the game’s reputation slowly reassemble. By the time its anime — Cyberpunk: Edgerunners — arrived in late 2022, much of the game had been improved upon and its popularity exploded. Now, with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, its first expansion, releasing in 2023, the title has finally lived up to its expectations and has been embraced as one of the year’s highlights in gaming, proving the power of live service.

However, being able to evolve a game over time has its drawbacks. Games like the original Cyberpunk 2077 can be sold with known issues, causing many DLC launches (most of which arrive at additional costs) to feel more like parts that should have been included in the original game. In the case of Pokémon, its The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero expansion released this year and it still battles with the constant frame drops of its base game.

DLC has been an incredible development in gaming, though it’s not without its downsides as well. With many of today’s most popular video games operating with a live service approach, its ongoing implementation will continue to play a key role in reshaping the industry.

PlayStation’s Lead Over Xbox

For decades, companies have fought to establish themselves as the king of consoles. Nowadays, the big three are Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. With the latter in its own lane, Sony and Microsoft have been battling it out since Microsoft introduced the Xbox in 2001 as a competitor to Sony’s massive success with the PlayStation 2.

As each generation of consoles comes and goes, key elements dictating the results are exclusive games, hardware value and release timing. For some, the console purchase process comes down to which system their friends own, and when Microsoft grabbed a one-year head start on Sony with the Xbox 360 against the PlayStation 3 back in 2005, it notched an early lead.

Insomniac Games

In 2023, however, it has become clear that Sony is the dominant force in consoles. Data from Ampere Analysis this month, as noted by the Financial Times, indicates that PlayStation sales grew by 65% this year while Xbox sales fell by 15%. At this point, the most notable difference between PlayStation and Xbox’s offerings nowadays is exclusives. Following up on the major success of God of War Ragnarök in 2022, Sony launched two more hits with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy XVI this year. Meanwhile, Microsoft had relied on Starfield and Forza Motorsport to drive sales in 2023, with neither meeting expectations.

As Sony tallies up its many victories found with the PlayStation 5, it’s easy to declare them the winner of this everlasting battle, but the war is far from over. For Microsoft, its arsenal has developed in two major ways this year.

First, Xbox Game Pass — a subscription service for Xbox and PC gamers that provides access to hundreds of downloadable games — continues to be embraced by fans as a way to try out the latest titles without having to fully commit to a $70 USD purchase.

After two years of dealing with antitrust law, Microsoft secured its unprecedented acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion USD. For comparison, that’s over half of Sony’s $119 billion USD valuation (based on market cap), reminding everyone that the multi-trillion-dollar empire Microsoft commands can outspend its competition. While the antitrust battle led to commitments such as a 10-year-deal to keep CoD available for PlayStation, there’s no denying that this acquisition is a significant long-term move that will play a key role in Microsoft’s commitment to catching up.