Single worst year in gaming I can think of being a part of since i started gaming regularly in 1999.
There were some rough years (2006, 2014 and 2021 come to mind) but this has to be THE worst year in gaming in decades.
When it comes to AAA games, MS and Nintendo MIA as they are every other year. EA has had 2 good games in the last 3 years, but even by their standards, they have literally fucking nothing this year. Ubisoft surprisingly doesnt have their B game that at least has AAA production values this year either. That leaves Japanese publishers like Capcom and SE both of which took this year off. No idea why Forspoken was delayed. They literally have nothing. Capcom's only productive team is RE, but they said they would release pragmata in 2022 but that was obviously a lie. That makes it SIX major publishers ALL taking this year off.
Only Sony seems to have brought AAA games, but they are pretty much all last gen games that feel more of the same instead of setting standards like they used to in the 2010s. Say what you will about TLOU2, unambitious is not something you can level at it like you could with HFW and GT7. GoW could be that ambitious game but the visuals leave a lot to be desired.
From is doing what they have been for over 13 years now. I think its time for them to move on. open world souls is the best they can do then they need to move to a new IP otherwise they are starting to feel a lot more samey and Ubisofty. They were the chosen ones.
Whats sad is that 2022 could have been THE year where everyone brought new and fresh ideas to the table. 2019 was an incredible year for single player games with Control, Days Gone, Death Stranding, Gears of War 5, Star Wars Fallen Order, RE2MAKE, DMC, Sekiro all launching in one year. Targeting 2022 wouldve given them 3 years to deliver sequels to all of these games but aside from FromSoft, no one else showed up. Sony bungled Sony Bend and KojiPro. MS did god knows what with Coalition for the last 3 years. Remedy wasted 3 years on a trashy Chinese game for some reason. Fallen Order seems to be targeting March so it seems they used their time effectively but I will believe it when I see actual gameplay. If you cant release a gameplay trailer in 3 years of making a video game, you need to quit and move on because you fucking suck at producing video games.