2024 video game review – a year to forget but there’s hope for 2025
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After another year of layoffs, flops, and endless live service games what were the positives in 2024 and what could they mean for 2025?. It’s not been a good couple of years for the video games industry. Nintendo and most of the other big Japanese publishers have carried on as usual but, as we’ve explored in our round-up of the year’s biggest news stories, it’s been nothing but disaster after disaster in the West. Yes, great new games are still being released every month but a glimpse behind the curtain reveals an industry without direction or leadership. Or any sense of shame as to what has happened this year.
![[Concord trailer image]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/SEI_228833530-a6a9.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
We made these same observations during last year’s review of the year and very little has changed in terms of the quality of stewardship from Sony, Microsoft, or any of the other Western publishers. There were more layoffs this year than the last and, in most cases, not even the barest flicker of guilt from any of the execs responsible.
![[Mock up of Nintendo Switch 2 from case manufacturer]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_232810724-43d6.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
That’s unsurprising given that they’ve never acknowledged that any of this is their fault; that they failed to prepare for the increasing cost of developing new games and that they were too greedy and stupid to realise that recklessly throwing everything into live service games, as everyone else did exactly the same thing, wasn’t going to work. None of that has changed this year but what does make it different from 2023 is that there is now a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
![[PS5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox deals for Black Friday 2024]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/SEC_231326782-76c7.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
If the truth is ever known about what has been happening behind closed doors at Microsoft and Sony, for the last two years, it’s not likely to be for a long time, given how poor a picture it will paint of both companies. There’s been reports of civil wars at both console makers – Microsoft’s over whether to go multiformat or not and Sony’s over whether to abandon single-player games in favour of live service games – and while it can’t be proven, it would certainly explain a lot.
