2022 was, as ever, an incredibly busy year in the games industry. With major acquisitions (looking at you Microsoft), a plethora of brilliant indie titles, the increasing transition to ‘next-generation’ systems and the arrival of the Steam Deck, it certainly wasn’t a quiet one. Rather than looking back though it’s time to look towards the future. In theory, 2023 should end up being one of my favourite years since 2017, two of my beloved franchises are getting new releases (The Legend of Zelda + Spider-Man) and my Steam wishlist is packed with upcoming indies that I am desperate to indulge in on my Steam Deck.

I should preface the rest of this piece by explaining a few things about myself. Firstly, I am, at heart, a huge Nintendo fan. Ever since I unwrapped a Wii at Christmas 2006 I have been hooked to everything the big N release, yep that includes the Wii U… Outside of the Nintendo-sphere I spend the rest of my time alternating between the PS5 and my ever growing Steam library. As such, I have little knowledge or hope for XBOX-related releases, unless they come to Steam that is. So bear that in mind when this list is heavily Nintendo and PlayStation focused ok? Anyway, where were we?

Will Insomniac Nail The Superhero Landing?

I don’t think many people can look at Insomniac Games’ output over the past five years with any complaints. Two fantastic Spider-Man experiences and a brilliant return to form for the Ratchet & Clank series have only reinforced how much of an asset Insomniac is to our industry, and 2023 looks to be there biggest year yet. Spider-Man 2 seems fairly likely to launch this year, although we still haven’t seen too much gameplay wise. I guess my main hope here is that Insomniac manage to not only produce another brilliant Spider-Man experience, but continue with the small positive steps I saw in Miles Morales which in my opinion featured vastly superior combat that really utilised Miles’ abilities to brilliant effect.

Its PS5 exclusivity also makes me believe that Spider-Man 2 is going to be one of the system’s truly ‘next-generation’ games. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was a glorious, albeit too short, showcase of what the PS5 is capable of producing when there are no older systems to worry about. Rumours of co-operative play are unlikely to happen in my opinion, but I’d consider it a missed opportunity if we can’t switch between Peter and Miles seamlessly during certain sequences of the game, just please give us less obnoxious MJ sections…

Marvel’s Wolverine is another one to keep an eye on, it’s highly unlikely we’ll get to play it this year, but I’m sure we will get a much more in-depth look at the game at some point, and I’m delighted that Insomniac are tasked with bringing another beloved Superhero experience to the PS5. It’s a great time to be a fan of Insomniac Games, I just hope there’s another Ratchet & Clank game in the works somewhere…

Zelda’s Magnum Opus

If there’s any game I’ve been desperate to play since it was announced it has to be The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I was a latecomer to the Zelda series, with my first experience of Hyrule coming through A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS all the way back in 2013, it’s been ten years?! Since then I’ve managed to negotiate my way through the majority of the series, with particular highlights being Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker. I fell in love with Breath of the Wild when I first played it, resulting in a save file with just over 200 hours and a deep sadness within me when the credits rolled and I asked myself what a post-Breath of the Wild gaming landscape looked like for me.

I consider Breath of the Wild to be the series’ greatest entry, and even six years on, I don’t think many open-world games have managed to nail the aspects of exploration and experimentation that made this Hyrule, in particular, so memorable to me. I think it is fair to say that expectations for its follow up are high, very high, but I have every confidence that Nintendo will manage to live up to those expectations. My biggest gripe with Breath of the Wild has to be the dungeons, a sentiment echoed by many fans who felt the game fell short in this area, but outside of a few other minor things there isn’t much for Nintendo to improve on with the sequel (for the record I love weapons being able to break).

May 12th can’t come soon enough.

Indie Heaven

Moving away from the big blockbusters for a moment, 2022 showed me once again that the best innovations in this industry are being made by smaller developers who are willing to take the risks that AAA publishers refuse to. Tunic is a brilliant ‘Zelda-like’ that isn’t shy in where it takes inspiration from but has a brilliant instruction manual mechanic that sees the player themselves put the manual together and then use it to solve puzzles and navigate their way through the games world. All of this is presented in a secret language too, nothing is too easy in Tunic and I love it for that. Even those that stick to more traditional conventions continue to dominate their respective genres whilst offering a refreshed, take Chained Echoes for example, a JRPG inspired by the likes of Chrono Trigger and my personal ‘Game of the Year’ for 2022.

2023 will hopefully see another slew of brilliant releases emerge from this ever-growing sector of the industry. There’s a certain sequel that I’m desperate to play, but I think it has surpassed ‘indie’ status, so I’ll talk about that later. In particular, I’m keeping my eye on Sea of Stars, The Plucky Squire and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, all of which promise to deliver great experiences for a fraction of the AAA price and without the need for 15 different editions that all offer various different degrees of virtual tat.

If you’ve yet to delve into the underground world of indie gaming, there’s no better time to buy a ticket and hop on board. In an era of fatigue and disillusion with major publishers and their continued questionable practises, indie gaming is the oasis in a rather dry and gloomy desert.

Like A Normal Switch But SUPER!

This year we’ll be celebrating the 6th birthday of Nintendo’s spirited little hybrid console. However, I can’t help but think that when we blow out the candles on the cake, we’ll be wishing for its retirement. The Nintendo Switch has had a brilliant run, with over 118 million sales it’s deservedly the third-best-selling system of all time and has been a resounding success from Nintendo who desperately needed to maintain its relevancy in the industry after the Wii U. That doesn’t hide the fact that it’s clearly deficient in the power department though, and badly needs a refresh within the next few years in order to stay competitive in the era of the all-powerful Steam Deck.

It seems par for the course now that a fair few games are launching on the system with glaring performance issues, looking at you, Scarlet and Violet, and third-party ports are slowing down to a mere trickle as more developers are working primarily on more powerful current generation hardware. A more powerful Switch must be in the works and I think we’ll likely see an announcement at some point later this year. I had previously believed that there’d be a repeat of 2017 with Tears of the Kingdom branching two generations of Nintendo hardware with a ‘Super Switch’ launching alongside a new Zelda game, evidently I was wrong but I do believe we’re not far away from the reveal of Nintendo’s next generation of hardware.

Digital Foundry’s John Linneman revealed late last year that a mid-generation Switch ‘Pro’ was planned and ultimately cancelled by Nintendo, perhaps in favour of a full next-generation piece of hardware? Nintendo love to keep secrets, but hopefully, they’ll share some details this year, and we’ll finally get some answers on what the future of Nintendo’s hardware looks like.

Becoming The Backlog Buster

Ah the videogame backlog, for some a thing of comfort, others annoyance, but we all have one. I think over the past few years, my backlog has grown to an uncontrollable amount to the point where I’ve made it my mission this year to commit to completing at least a game a week across all the platforms I own. The Steam Deck has admittedly helped me immensely on this quest, especially the ability to stream PS5 games on the device with relative ease. I think my biggest challenge will be avoiding the temptation of the plethora of sales that are aimed at us weak-minded players on every storefront known to man.

Not a day goes by where one of Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony isn’t calling out to me with some juicy 50% discounts on some game I wishlisted on a cold winter’s night in 2019. I think at this point I own CrossCode on three different platforms at various states of completion, a fact I am ashamed to acknowledge but one that I think many of us find ourselves repeating with various different titles. I have colleagues who also find themselves in this dark place too, but I am sure if we come together and make a pledge to be better we can leave 2023 with a smaller backlog and a bigger wallet.

How do I plan to do this? By holding myself accountable right here on this website! I’ll be updating my completion page every time I finish a game as well as sharing some brief thoughts on it so stay tuned for the first entry very soon. Perhaps in the meantime I can hope that 2023 is full of less awesome games for me to buy? Or maybe the way to go is focusing less on the huge open world experiences and instead losing my self in smaller worlds that can be discovered and wrapped up in just an evening?

Interesting New IPs

In a similar vein to the ‘sequel-mania’ that has taken over cinema screens over the last decade, the same is somewhat true of the games industry too. Outside of the aforementioned indie scene, the majority of major releases are either sequels, remakes or new entries in already existing franchises. Do we really need another ‘insert yearly franchise release here’ or a remake of another Resident Evil game? I see the appeal of both remakes and new entries in already existing franchises, financially it makes much more sense to release a new Mario game than it does to engineer a brand new IP that lacks the star power that a successful franchise brings, but I’m desperate to see what a new generation of developers at powerhouses such as Nintendo can come up with should they be given the go ahead to try something different.

Splatoon is one of the biggest series’ Nintendo has in its catalogue nowadays, with three mainline entries and a rabid fanbase that has led to sales of over 26 million units as of September 2022. As a day one adopter of the original on the Wii U it brings me great joy to see how quickly this relatively new IP has emerged as a key pillar in Nintendo’s library. On the PlayStation front, Returnal and Ghost of Tsushima are two of my favourite releases in the last 3/4 years, both brand new IPs that delivered brilliant experiences and have seen great success as a result. It’s always a risk to move away from formulas and brands that are successful, but every great series has to start somewhere, and I hope that 2023 sees less recycling of old names and more of a focus on delivering new adventures in never before seen worlds.

Mario Movie Makes Moves

The video game movie is an interesting point of discussion nowadays as for every somewhat successful adaptation such as the Sonic movies we also receive something akin to the rather underwhelming Uncharted film that deviates so far from plot points and character traits seen in the games that it may as well have been completely unrelated. From everything we’ve seen so far, The Super Mario Bros. Movie looks really good and I hope it is the start of a wider expansion into Nintendo making use of more of their franchises in this way. I’m certainly not asking for a Nintendo Cinematic Universe, I think Super Smash Bros has that covered, but I’d love to see a Zelda or Metroid movie/TV show at some point.

I strongly believe that videogames are a fantastic tool for story-telling, doing so in a way that no other media can possibly replicate, but that didn’t stop me from going to see Detective Pikachu four times in cinema and struggling to contain myself every time I saw the beautifully rendered live-action Charizard or the incredibly creepy Mr. Mime who was subject to a rather dark ‘torture’ scene midway through the film. Oh, shoutout to Ludicolo too! If Mario’s big screen debut is a success I see no reason why it couldn’t act as a springboard for Nintendo to begin collaborations on more of it’s major franchises. How about a Splatoon animated series, or a revival of the Pikmin shorts series?

Thanks For Playing!

Seven wishes feels like a good number to stop at right? I’d say so, if I make all my wishes public they won’t come true so I’ll keep a few on the back burner for now. I’d love to see what anyone else is hoping for this year from the games industry, no matter how silly or serious, be sure to let me know your thoughts on Twitter! In the meantime, thanks for checking out this first piece, I’m excited to see how Tom’s World evolves across 2023…