Here are the results of the year – the material about the most important thing that happened in the game industry and culture in twelve months. You will learn about the Nintendo Switch triumph, about what everyone hate Electronic Arts And how PUBG I drove the players crazy.
Gambling summarizes the results of the year: the best games of 2017!
Switch year
Honestly, when we talked about Switch a year ago, some in our editorial office treated her with a fair amount of skepticism. While the giants of the industry are measured by the number of personnel per second and wage a fierce war for virtual reality, Nintendo is engaged in some strange portable. Which also works on the chip from tablets and smartphones. Is this a console? So, another PS vita, and it is waiting for the same unenviable fate. The memories of the failure of WII https://queen-vegas-casino.co.uk/ U was too fresh, which prevented the new project Nintendo from the end.
But the "Big N" managed to convince even the most stubborn. Switch turned out to be not only well done, but also a commercially successful console. In the first month, almost three million prefixes around the world were sold. Switch has become the most quickly sold out Nintendo console in Europe, America and Australia. By the beginning of October, sales almost reached eight million, and by the end of the current financial year, that is, by April, the company expects to take the bar in fourteen million. If this happens, then Switch will beat the results of Wii U in exactly the year in all five years of its existence.
One of the reasons for such popularity was, of course, powerful exclusives. At the same time as the console, a magnificent The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Yes, it came out on the dying Wii U, but it was for the new prefix that the adventure of the Link became the real system of the system. The game received 97 points for Metacritic, entering the twenty of the highest projects in history. Breath of the Wild became the game of the year according to The Game Awards 2017, and received nine from us.
Then they left Mario Kart 8 Deluxe , Innovative fighting game ARMS , Multiplayer action Splatoon 2 And an unexpected crossover – Mario+Rabbi DS: Kingdom Battle. All projects received high marks and, quite naturally, showed excellent sales. Well, in October I saw the light Super Mario Odyssey , who just fell in love with critics around the world.
Nintendo has shown its flexibility that is not characteristic of it and supported many small projects. And also allowed to transfer to the console L.A. Noire , Resident Evil: Revelations And Skyrim. What to say there, even came out on Switch Doom! True, the schedule had to worsen a bit, but still. In less than a year, Switch received a rich library of games for every taste.
In a word, we can say with confidence: Nintendo regained the status of a full -fledged titanium industry, and Switch is one of the most important events of not only 2017, but also at least the last five years.
Evil Corporation
But for whom 2017 was definitely not the best year, it is for Electronic Arts. Not very, you know, it's nice when everyone around you is called evil corporation. Even if you deserve this title.
It all started back in March, when the long -awaited Mass Effect: Andromeda. I went out and … caused a real storm of indignation. No, game journalists met a new part favorably, although they noted that she could not withstand comparisons with the adventures of Shepard. We put an “Andromede” eight and do not regret. However, the players were much more severe. On Metacritic, the user rating of the latter Mass Effect does not reach even five out of ten.
Especially fans were angry with bugs and the front animation of the characters, which turned out even worse than in the previous parts of the franchise. Electronic Arts was answered by something like “anything happens, we’ll correct the jambs, and in general the series has a great future”. True, soon after that it became known that the franchise was frozen, BioWare Montreal disbanded, and the developers were transferred to the studio Motive.
But the hype around the Mass Effect and is not close to the fact that it began in the fall. First EA closed the studio Visceral Games , Creators of the series Dead Space , And their nameless project for "Star Wars" I handed over to other developers. Because, according to them, single -user linear adventures are no longer so popular among players. Then she went out Need for Speed: Payback , which received 5.5 points from us. And the rest of the world publications remained from her, to put it mildly, not enthusiastic. Not only did the game itself were mediocre, but also microtransactions in it were obsessive to indecent.
But all this fades against the background of the disaster, which the release turned out Star Wars Battlefront 2. That's where the players anger did not! You could not hear anything about it only if the last couple of months did not go on the Internet at all. At first, users were outraged by the fact that the Deluxe publication included not only the usual skins for characters and cosmetic additions, but also the weapons that gave significant advantages in the multiplayer.
Then it turned out that for unlocking, for example, Darth Vader in the game needs to spend forty hours. And to open all the content in Battlefront 2, it was necessary to play six months or spend more than two thousand dollars on lootboxes. EA published a post on Reddit, in which she stated that all this was done allegedly so that the players were proud and a sense of satisfaction when receiving their favorite heroes. Record received the largest number of diesels in the entire history of the site. A decrease in the cost of the entire content four times the situation did not save. It came to the point that Belgian officials considered the opportunity to equate Battlefront 2, and at the same time Overwatch , To gambling. This did not happen, but the case is significant.
As a result, at the end of November, the Electronic Arts shares fell by 8.5% compared to last year, which is why the company lost more than three billion dollars of shareholder value. And the starting sales of Battlefront 2 were lower than that of the first part, by 61%. Is it worth it to be surprised that the news about buying a studio Respawn , Creators of the series Titanfall , None of the players were particularly happy ..
In general, in 2017, Electronic Arts confidently pulled out Konami The title of the most hated company in the gaming industry. Whether this will entail at least some changes, we will see in the coming year.
4k years
Microsoft This year, too, was noted by a couple of rather unpopular solutions. Back in early January, it was announced that it was canceled Scalebound – Perhaps the most ambitious exclusive for Xbox One and Windows. Recall that the team was engaged in the development Platinum Games , And he led all Hideki Kamia, the Creator Devil May Cry And Bayonetta.
However, the first trailers and gameplay videos of the game were met cool. Negative background, mocking the Kamia with the leadership of the publishing house, as well as technical problems in the development led to the closure of the project. The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer then wrote on Twitter that all this is only for the benefit of the players and that an amazing line of exclusives awaits them ahead of them. For example, Crackdown 3. True, then she was postponed from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2018. Again due to technical difficulties.
But Microsoft still managed to end the year on a good note – if not at the expense of games, then due to iron. On E3 2017, the company finally introduced the Xbox One X, previously known as Project Scorpio. Almost all promises were fulfilled – the improved and supplemented Xbox and really turned out to be the most powerful console to date. He is the first among the prefixes allows you to launch new items in honest 4K at 30 frames per second.
Not everything, of course, but the result is still impressive. The same PS4 Pro cannot boast of this. Analysts predicted that the new device would not be able to interest the audience, since the declared price tag of $ 500 will scare away most potential buyers. But the forecasts were erroneous.
On the shelves of Xbox One X appeared on November 7 and showed impressive starting results. In Britain, the console in the first week dispersed eighty thousand copies. The same PS4 Pro took this month. Even Microsoft itself did not expect such a stir. And this despite the fact that the new prefix does not have a single large exclusive – all games are available on the usual Xbox One.
Well, we congratulate the company on the victory and celebrate the beginning of the 4K era.
Independence of the year
For fans of the series Hitman This year has become extremely ambiguous, because there were good news and very disturbing. It would seem that the franchise was just reborn. Recently, the first season of restart was released, which received excellent grades from both critics and players. But the publishing house Square Enix Suddenly announced in May that she exposes the studio Io Interactive for sale. It turned out that over the past financial year the company suffered losses in the amount of forty -two million dollars. And among the reasons for such a failure, very weak sales of Hitman are called.
Of course, this news, of course, did not please fans of the series, because the developers intended to devote 47 at least two more seasons to devote the stories of the agent. And as a result, the very existence of the franchise was in question. However, in June, unexpected and pleasant news came. The head of IO Interactive Hakan Abrack announced that the studio officially became independent. Moreover, the developers managed to negotiate with the Square Enix publishing house on the full maintenance of the rights to the Hitman brand.
In November, it became known that the new game about the adventures of the 47th is already in development. True, whether it will be connected with the first season of the previous version, it is not yet clear.
PUBG year
The year before last we did not wait Pokemon Go. In 2017, we did not wait for Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. The game that drove the planet crazy again appeared as if from nowhere. Of course, the scale of Pokemonomania is far away, but the fact that PUBG is phenomenally successful is the fact.
The game took the bar in a million copies two weeks after entering early access. In April, the project was first ahead of the monthly revenue of Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. And it was only the beginning. For three months the game bought four million players, and the income of the publishing house Bluehole exceeded one hundred million dollars. By July, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds played ten million matches, that is, the players spent a total of twenty -five thousand years in PUBG. After another three months, sales were exceeded for thirteen million copies. In November, the game fell into the Guinness Book of Records seven times. Among other things, she became the most popular game in Steam and the first project to overtake online projects from the number of players from Valve. In less than a year of its existence, PUBG received five prestigious awards.
Today in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds on average plays more than one million three hundred thousand people. And this is only on PC, without taking into account the recently released version for Xbox One. Critics are still arguing about what is the reason for such a frantic popularity. After all, the game did not have any marketing at the start. Most likely, this is the case when all the glory of the project ensured the effect of sundress radio. On Twitch, the game was stripped by everyone who is not lazy, providing PUBG completely free advertising.
Be that as it may, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds can be confidently called the main hit of the last year.
The failure of the year
In 2017, Gamestroy generally surprised us. A game grown from amateur fashion beats all possible records, and a new project of the famous game designer suffers such a collapse that in a nightmare will not dream. Speech, of course, about Lawbreakers – The brainchild of Cliff Blezhinski, which will most likely bury his career.
At the stage of announcements and presentations, everything looked good. Blazhinsky promised a steep heroic action movie by the type of Overwatch, but with blood, gravitational anomalies and hardcore in his spirit Unreal Tournament. However, it somehow did not work out to attract the players. During a closed beta test, the number of users hardly reached the mark of seven thousand.
Well, the start of sales turned into a fiasco. Lawbreakers barely managed to collect three thousand users at the start. And this is with fairly high marks – the project has seventy -six points on Metacritic. Cliff Blazhinsky said in an interview that the starting results are not so important, because this is a kind of marathon, and not a sprint, and the militant will find his audience over time.
We do not know, he reassured journalists, publishers or himself, but the forecast did not come true. The situation every week was only worse. Lawbreakers reached the bottom in September, when it set a real anti -record: PC in it played at the same time … Ten people. There is simply nowhere to fall below.[Update from 11.01.18: And now the full 0] is recorded]
Oddly enough, the project was not transferred to a conditionally deposit basis, but we have no doubt that this is only a matter of time. And the developers are sorry. The game was still not bad.
The trial of the year
Also, the past year was remembered by us by the trial, which is already called the most loud in the recent history of the gaming industry. Corporation Zenimax , which owns studios Bethesda , ID Software , Arkane and a lot more, accused the company Oculus vr The fact that her helmet of virtual reality was created according to the stolen technology. Supposedly programmer John Karmak, before leaving Zenimax, illegally copied hundreds of secret documents and used them to help Palmer Lucky finalize Oculus Rift. For this, the company demanded compensation in the amount of four billion dollars.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder Facebook , which belongs to Oculus, called the accusations absurd. He stated that in life he did not hear about any Zenimax and that someone just wants to cash in on someone else's success. As a result, the court nevertheless rejected the claims from the owners of Bethesda. But during the process, another important detail became clear – Palmer Laki violated the non -disclosure agreement signed with Zenimax Corporation. And only for this Oculus VR is obliged to pay a penalty of five hundred million dollars. After this verdict, Laki was forced to leave the created company to him.
However, on this litigation did not end. At first, Oculus demanded to reduce the amount of compensation ten times, then Zenimax said that she owed a billion and at least 20% of Rift sales. Well, after John Karmak requested former employers twenty million for false accusations.
All this is still stretching and is unlikely to end soon. Well, what to do? Despite the lack of excitement around virtual reality, this is a very promising direction in the gaming industry. And the struggle around him boils serious.
The anniversary of the year
2017 has become truly special for us, because the gambling is twenty years old. Just think, the first issue of the magazine lay on the shelves in the fall of 1997. How long it was, how much the game industry has changed, and indeed the world – and we are still in order! And we are not going to give up positions.
We decided to celebrate the round date with the appropriate scope. First, we restarted the site. Of course, we loved the old portal with all our hearts, but it has not changed since 2009. Now the main page has become modern, functional and stylish.
Secondly, we brilliantly conducted a live broadcast from the main event in the CIS-Igromir-2017. For three days we were broadcast, whose guests were Tony Watkins, chapter Electronic Arts Russia , The legend of the gaming industry Richard Garriot and many others.
And Gamemia became a partner of one of the main titans of Gamera – companies Blizzard. For the first time in a few years, the company visited Gamirmir, and it was we who were engaged in the organization of direct broadcasts from the stand of the creators Diablo and Overwatch. And on our own this year, we spent simply a myriad of various competitions and distributed prizes for hundreds of thousands of rubles. We also organized two hot tournaments in Just Dance 2018.
Happy New Year. May everything be fine with you. See you!
Gambling summarizes the results of the year: the best games of 2017!