2016 was positively stuffed with major news, announcements, and developments in the gaming industry. Indeed, its legacy for video games will probably be that of a transitive year, as multiple major announcements this year will probably end up influencing the direction and shape of the industry for a long time to come. Which of these, however, was the biggest one of them all? Let’s find out.
The Last of Us Part 2 Announcement
The Last of Us is one of the greatest video games ever made, so it should come as no surprise that fans wanted a sequel of it. That alone should be reason enough for the announcement of its sequel being a big deal, but probably no one expected one so soon- after all, Naughty Dog just delivered Uncharted 4 earlier this year, which came after a lengthy development cycle- who knew when their next game would come? We still don’t know when it will, but we know what it is, and what it is makes us incredible excited.
Red Dead Redemption 2 Announcement
We knew it was coming, but that didn’t stop us from being excited when it was finally announced. Red Dead Redemption stands as one of the highest rated games of all time, and is quite possibly the most beloved game of the last generation- its sequel has the potential to become one of the biggest games of this generation, which means that its announcement definitely stands out as a pretty big deal.
Xbox Scorpio Announcement
Who expected Microsoft to announce a brand new console so soon? And such a monstrously powerful one at that? Rumblings of an upgraded Xbox had been percolating for quite a while, but the actual announcement of the Scorpio took us all by surprise, especially when we realized just how incredibly powerful the system would really be upon its launch next year.
PS4 Pro Announcement
The PS4 Pro announcement was expected- not only had Sony themselves discussed the system before its official reveal, but just about every aspect of it had been leaked before even then. That doesn’t stop the reveal for what would become the very first iterative console ever in history from being significant.
Nintendo Switch Reveal
We knew Nintendo was working on a new system called the NX, because they had talked about it briefly once last year, and then never again. Meanwhile, fans were working themselves up into a frenzy as they waited for official news, while leaks of all kind about the system circulated all over the place. When the Switch was finally revealed, at less than a day’s notice, it took us all aback- Nintendo is looking to do something truly fresh with their new system, and this time around, it looks like they have their advertising and third party support down, too.
Xbox One Sales Victory
Three years into the generation, Microsoft started to finally regain some ground against Sony when the Xbox One won several months straight in key territories, such as the US, UK, and Australia. While this is unlikely to make any difference to the outcome of this console war, it demonstrated that Xbox was still competitive in the market- and that alone is far more important to the health of the industry than anything else.
WINNER
Scorpio Announcement
Look, a new console announcement trumps everything else, and while we had three of them this year, the Scorpio announcement still takes it- we knew that Nintendo were going to announce a new system, we’d known it for a year, and almost everything about the PS4 Pro had been leaked beforehand. The Scorpio completely blindsided us, and it ended up dominsting discourse around games for the rest of the year.
Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.