2024 Gaming Report: How did PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo fare?

After a long and busy 12 months, 2024 is officially on the books. Gamers have a few weeks to rest before the video game release calendar begins in February with a barrage of major releases. But that’s a problem for next month. Until then, we still have some time to reflect on what has been a rollercoaster year for the gaming industry, full of surprise hits, total flops, and surprising lack of performances.

At the center of it all were the three pillars of mainstream gaming: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. While their power may be waning in the age of portable computing like the Steam Deck, owners of these platforms are still the water cooling conversation starters, and every move they make creates buzz. This year, all three companies find themselves in a strange place. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series

The good news is that all three of them coped with the task, even if no one stood out the best. Each company had an asterisk on it that marked an uneven year, regardless of which console you played on. Continuing last year’s tradition, we are once again closing the year by handing out final ratings to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. All three passed the exam, but all will have to study harder if they are to become A students in 2025.

PlayStation

If I were a picky judge, I’d have a good reason to fail the PS5 this year. Sony’s year has been full of missteps and disappointments, making 2024 look terrible in a vacuum. His greatest difficulties came in character Agreementa game that would usher in the future of PlayStation live services. Instead, it was an immediate failure that was shut down within weeks and the studio behind it was shut down. This one costly disaster could have jeopardized years of planning and single-handedly changed PlayStation’s future.

This bad news was accompanied by delicate disappointments. The long-awaited PS5 Pro console has finally launched this year, but its specifications are disappointing considering the eye-watering price. This made the system run slowly, raising questions about how much extra power was really needed in the console. It didn’t aid that the system’s AI scaling tool, PSSR, also had some bugs at launch. In other areas of hardware, Sony seemed to have all but abandoned its virtual reality ambitions, offering very little software support for the PlayStation VR2 (the biggest update this year was PC support). At times, it felt like Sony’s hardware business had hit a brick wall.

However, if I only looked at these frail points, it would be a narrowing of the picture of what was an overall good year for PlayStation. Sony’s victories didn’t come from exaggerated exclusives like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2but through unexpected surprises that helped expand the system to up-to-date audiences. The crown jewel of the crop was Astrobotwhich saw Sony once again create an all-ages platformer that helped create the original PlayStation console. Helldivers 2 emerged as a counterbalanced live services success story Agreementfailure. Even Starblade turned out to be a pleasant surprise, allowing the Korean developer to achieve international success.

In between these highs, we got a handful of exclusive third-party games that gave the PS5 the best gaming lineup of any console this year. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth he praised it Final Fantasy XVI failed to achieve in 2023, while Bloober Team Silent Hill 2 took on the impossible task of remaking one of the greatest games of all time in a satisfying way. These highs were enough to end an inconsistent year in which Sony relied heavily on unnecessary double dips Remastered Horizon Zero Dawn. This could have been the best and worst year for the PS5 all in one.

Degree: B

Xbox

From the launch of the Xbox Series X in 2020, it was clear that Microsoft’s console would have an extraordinary lifespan. Microsoft made it clear early on that it wasn’t necessarily trying to deliver killer apps, but it was trying to make Game Pass the lifestyle subscription service every gamer needs. 2024 will take this experiment to some truly unpredictable places that have left Xbox fans with whiplash; apparently we alternated between terrible news and great games every month.

There was a bad side Very bad. Xbox started the year with massive layoffs that resulted in the closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. The latter was extremely puzzling, considering the studio created perhaps the best Series X exclusive video yet, Hi-Fi rushjust a year earlier. At the end of the year, Microsoft introduced a complicated price boost for Game Pass that turned the “best deal in gaming” into an pricey proposition. It didn’t aid that some of the biggest games on the site didn’t go as expected. Both Stalker 2 AND Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 at launch they were full of bugs while Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 AND Starfield: Shattered Space landed as disappointing releases.

This was an ongoing PR crisis for Xbox in 2024, even if it wasn’t justified. Xbox’s decision to release some exclusive games on competing platforms should be cause for celebration, as Microsoft has destroyed the annoying wall of exclusivity separating consoles. Instead, the move fueled outrage over the console war. Similarly, Xbox has made huge strides to make its game more accessible than ever by bringing Game Pass to devices like the Amazon Fire Stick. This has also been criticized with “This is Xbox” which suggested that any device that could run games was essentially an Xbox console. This move confused console purists, but I consider the message behind the idea to be a positive step forward for video games.

While it wasn’t a year full of exclusives, Xbox delivered where it mattered. He ended the year on a powerful note Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 AND Indiana Jones and the Great Circletwo of the best-received games of this Xbox generation. On the way to these “confident launches” we received a steady stream of “day one” third party releases that continued to sell the value of the service. Dungeons of Hinterberg AND Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess are both hits that were included in the list of the 10 best games of 2024 by Digital Trends magazine. With this in mind, I’m inclined to release the 2024 Xbox with a perfectly good, if unnoticeable, rating. However, I expect significant improvement in 2025.

Degree: B-

Nintendo

After receiving a coveted A grade in last year’s report, Nintendo had a substantial task ahead of it – and it seemed like it would have no problem accomplishing it. After all, 2024 was certainly going to be the year we finally bought a Nintendo Switch 2, with a range of powerful, striking exclusives like Mario Kart 9 Or Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

Well… that didn’t happen. After all these expectations, the up-to-date Nintendo console failed completely. Nintendo confirmed its existence after years of speculation, but refrained from showing it or even announcing its specifications. This left Nintendo in a strange place when it came to software. It was clear that the company’s most notable developers were quietly working on up-to-date games for the platform, leaving the B-team to fill the Switch’s last full year. To its credit, Nintendo delivered at least one exclusive game a month from January to December, but the lineup was actually eclectic.

Very few Switch exclusives released in 2024 were must-have additions to libraries. They were the closest Super Mario Party Jamboree AND The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdombut nothing reached the level Super Mario Odyssey Or Fire emblem: three houses. Instead, we got a buffet of niche games and weird remakes. These aren’t those kinds of games Mario vs. Donkey Kong Or Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition were not welcome on Switch; they were simply mainline console games, not weird filler. These games also didn’t always deliver results like other games Endless Ocean: Luminous AND Princess Peach: It’s showtime! they felt more like half-baked experiments than the polished games we’ve come to expect over the life of the Switch.

Even if it was a disappointing year overall, the experimental nature of the Switch year sometimes led to intriguing developments that can only happen when the publisher isn’t precious. Emio – Smiling Man is a fantastic re-release of the Famicom Detective Club that I don’t think we’ll ever see outside of a year like this. Pluto 3is underrated Side order The DLC is a real hidden gem and I can’t complain about the full remake Paper Mario: Millennium Door. The peaks weren’t particularly high, but it’s a strange year that I think I’ll look back on with nostalgia in a few years when Nintendo returns to its usual rotation of predictable hits.

Degree: C+