Pewdiepie Move Studios Again 2017 Pewdiepie Not at Club Penguin

These were the biggest stories in video games in 2017

Highlights of the past 12 months

By Dec 28, 2017, 12:00pm EST

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

At Polygon, nosotros write and read thousands of news stories each year. In that location'due south a value in revisiting them, examining them not just equally stand up-lone events but part of a whole. Collectively, these stories tell us about where games have been, where they're going, how the form grows and stumbles — sometimes both at one time.

It takes time to really understand what these stories have to teach united states. Simply I call up that an aggregating of 2017 news is already yielding useful lessons, mayhap even revelations, about gaming's futurity.

Austin Pikulski/Vox Studios

CONSOLES

The single biggest event that established 2017'southward significance was the launch of Nintendo's Switch. Never before take we seen a successful dwelling house console that is as well a handheld.

Post-obit the slaughter-house of the Wii U, Nintendo showed enormous conclusion to bet again on the concept of a tablet panel. This time, it institute a formula that the public likes, even if the company tripped upward on its ain rush to marketplace forth the mode.

As we stated in our review, it is "wholly unlike the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Switch is fully its ain affair.' How this shapes the responses of competitors remains to exist seen. The last time Nintendo shook up gaming, with the Wii, both Sony and Microsoft shifted direction, albeit with mixed results.

Austin Pikulski/Vox Studios

Another console arrived this twelvemonth, touted as the "most powerful" the globe has ever seen. The Xbox I 10 is undoubtedly a beast, something for the discerning, wealthy gamer. Merely it'south also a confirmation that the era of difficult generational resets is existence replaced by something more nuanced. The PlayStation 4 Pro came out final twelvemonth, but as nosotros stated in our review, Microsoft has released a superior package, albeit with a more than expensive cost tag. Dissimilar the PS4 Pro, the Xbox Ane X has extensive astern compatibility features and a UHD Blu-ray player. (Then again, the cheaper Xbox 1 Southward has the same features, too.)

It is, of course, in Microsoft'southward involvement to have risks. This generation, it has been outgunned past Sony. The PS4 recently passed the lxx million sales marker.

Microsoft has been reticent about sharing sales numbers, simply it's definitely well behind, and the Xbox 1 may never recover. Sony took its own risk belatedly last year with PlayStation VR, which has proven to be a steady seller and is currently on offer at a highly attractive toll.

Elsewhere on the VR front, Oculus appear a new stand-alone headset, due for launch next yr. Chosen Oculus Become, it's priced at $199. The current Rift received a toll cut this year, to $399. We nonetheless haven't heard the smash of afterburners in the VR sector, but it'south been a steady, encouraging twelvemonth.

The launch of Nintendo's SNES Archetype Edition demonstrated, once again, that gamers are but as enamored of the by as nosotros are of the future. The retro console launched in the fall, and information technology has been a highly sought-after purchase ever since. They made pretty good games back in the '90s.

PUBG Corp.

BIG GAMES

If nosotros had to choose one unmarried gaming story that stood out this year, it's the astounding success of PlayerUnknown ' southward Battlegrounds.

Equally we recently noted, it's "a buggy, half-done mess, horribly optimized, crashes frequently and, at present, has just one playable map." Nevertheless information technology'southward attracting amazing numbers. Information technology's common to see around 3 one thousand thousand people playing on Steam at the same time. Naught else comes shut.

PUBG took something that people similar — in this case, the shooting game — and gave it a tweak. It's a final-human being-continuing game in which 100 players fight 1 another in an always-decreasing geographic area. Simple is all-time.

This was also a year in which a Zelda and a Mario game arrived, a blest alignment that gave us two of the most vivid games always made. Nintendo's Switch success was propelled by these two games, which progressed open-earth role-playing and the platformer genre, respectively.

Breath of the Wild can already lay claim to existence perhaps the best game ever made, a archetype that offers something for everyone, and even so retains a coherence that merges old-school Nintendo with genuine newness.

Super Mario Odyssey returned united states of america to the much-maligned genre of 3D platforming in a manner we haven't seen in years. It honored the world'due south about famous gaming mascot, while daring to lay aside some of his most well-worn tricks.

Mario'due south return seems to take prompted a resurgence of some old video game mascots. Sonic Mania took u.s.a. back to the glory days of this most tortured of franchises.

Mega Man will before long be making a comeback. Crash Bandicoot and Bubsy got new games. Then in that location was Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time, which paid homage to the great platformers of the '90s.

Moira, the newest character in Overwatch.

Blizzard Entertainment

In 2017, some big-name games turned out to be disappointments. Mass Upshot : Andromeda looked rushed at launch. It later emerged that much of the game had been made in one year.

Centre-earth: Shadow of War failed to capture the essence of the original, with a faulty loot box system (more than on that later) and a discomforting line effectually slavery.

On the other hand, Overwatch went from forcefulness to strength. Information technology was already six months old when the year began and a major success. And nevertheless information technology'south made enormous strides forrard in the past 12 months, making more than a billion dollars and passing the 35 1000000 players mark.

It'southward received new heroes and maps, regular updates and fresh skins, besides as esports and multiplayer events. Blizzard has demonstrated an ability to back up and promote a game equally a living entity, while recognizing that it is besides a community, with a social and cultural role to play.

Indie developers offered new ways to connect with players at deep emotional layers. Some of the most rewarding games of the year included Rakuen, Stories Untold, Blackwood Crossing, Final Day of June, Everything and Nighttime in the Woods . If you desire a game to really make y'all feel something, play one of them.

A loot crate in Star Wars Battlefront 2.

EA Dice, Motive Studios, Criterion Games/Electronic Arts

CONTROVERSIES

Similar the dog that broke into a butcher's fridge, Electronic Arts has a trouble with moderation. Having coined a fortune from its sports games' Ultimate Team modes, the company proceeded to graft similar "boodle crates" onto other kinds of games.

Loot boxes energize in-game economies, offering companies new ways to make money. They are sometimes a fun mode to engage with games. But EA's Star Wars Battlefront two annoyed players, because the game felt like it was designed effectually its economic system and non the other fashion around.

EA wasn't the just visitor to go as well far with loot boxes. Only messing up a Star Wars game launch fabricated EA the most prominent target of blame.

The visitor was forced to pull dorsum its cynical microtransaction policy, prompting a stock cost fall. Lawmakers are kickoff to take an interest in the issue.

It's likely that this fiasco will lead to more than sensible implementations of boodle boxes. But recent events with games similar Destiny 2 prove discouraging.

Game companies finally ended a protracted labor dispute with vocalization actors, who went on strike over residue payments.

Games retailer GameStop decided that information technology might be funny to release a commercial that fabricated fun of gouging pre-order tactics used by game publishers and ... game retailers.

Game forum NeoGAF went offline for a while afterwards allegations of serious sexual misconduct were leveled against the site's owner, Tyler Malka. Moderators left their posts. The site later returned, with Malka denying the allegations, but much of its audition had left for a new forum called ResetEra.

Polygon faced controversy when the misconduct of one of our video producers, Nick Robinson, came to low-cal. Polygon "parted ways" with Robinson soon afterward, and he offered an amends for his actions.

Naughty Domestic dog released a vehement trailer for side by side year's The Terminal of Usa 2, including images of torture and gratuitous violence against women.

Elsewhere, Oculus found itself in a nasty legal battle with ZeniMax over the Rift's intellectual holding. In the end, the courts found that Oculus (and its founder Palmer Luckey) had non abided by non-disclosure agreements. ZeniMax was awarded $500 million. Luckey later departed Oculus possessor Facebook.

A Pokémon Become festival went badly when thousands of players showed up in Chicago hoping to observe rare Pokémon. They were unable to play the game due to server overloads.

Valve stepped in to fix Steam's trading card organization, announcing that it would kill "fake" games from its online retail hub, which information technology said were being used to generate trading cards for the grayness market, thus spinning quick and shady profits. Silicon Echo, the company behind those games, later on withdrew from game development.

Meanwhile, the game industry fielded some losses from the new Trump administration. Some companies were aroused about Trump's racist muslim ban, arguing that it impeded recruitment of primal talent.

The games industry's D.C.-based lobbying firm, the Entertainment Software Association, was, mayhap unsurprisingly, exultant nigh proposed tax cuts for corporations. But the International Game Developers Association expressed business that changes to health care law could accept a negative impact on indies.

Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg.

Maker Studios/YouTube

TOXICITY

Game companies are showing their teeth when information technology comes to toxicity, at least on those occasions when it affects their products. Ballsy filed a lawsuit against cheaters in its highly successful game Fortnite.

Niantic found new ways to shame Pokémon Get cheaters. The company appear that Pokémon obtained through unofficial means would now be marked every bit such in-game, and would first acting weirdly, besides.

Blizzard won an $viii million judgment against a company in Frg, which was profiting from a cheating tool.

Sure YouTubers had a bad year. Disney severed ties with PewDiePie after he fabricated anti-Semitic "jokes" in his videos. PewDiePie later blamed the media.

Kinda Funny co-founder Colin Moriarty quit the channel a few days after making a tired Twitter gag about women. Kinda Funny'south Greg Miller said that he and his partner had been "moving in two directions."

JonTron came out in back up of anti-immigrant policies. In the aftermath, he lost thousands of subscribers and was cut as a vox actor in Yooka-Laylee. He later said that the comments were "a bad look."

But the biggest self-own of the year came from the loathsome Carl "Sargon of Akkad" Benjamin, who has spent years making money spouting drivel about feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. Benjamin and allies showed upward to a Sarkeesian panel at VidCon in a clear try to intimidate her. Sarkeesian was not intimidated. She chosen him out as "a garbage man."

Zoe Quinn, a favorite target of gaming's misogynists, published an excellent book on GamerGate. One memorable line: "Online abuse is kind of similar finding shit in your nutrient. It doesn't much affair if it's a little turd or an entire shit sandwich."

Goodbye, Club Penguin.

Prototype: Disney Interactive Studios

FAREWELLS

Gaming is forever in flux. Every twelvemonth, things come, and things go.

This year, nosotros said adieu to Kinect, Microsoft'south motion-control gadget that never quite lived up to expectations. The visitor confirmed the end of manufacturing, but warned that it might come back.

Companies including Runic, Visceral, CastAR, Mad Catz and Gazillion closed their doors. Warner Bros. called information technology a day on the Lego Dimensions series.

Peter Moore, a lively game industry exec who played up to an image of showmanship, moved on from Electronic Arts to become chairman of 1 of the biggest soccer clubs in the world.

Yet for many people of a certain age, the closure of Club Penguin caused the most ache. The browser-based MMO had been a much-loved diversion for millions of kids in the concluding decade.

But then, that's the style things coil in games. Success is short-lived. Failure tends to exist enduring. Nosotros'll be doing all this again adjacent twelvemonth. Should exist fun.

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2017-best-games/2017/12/28/16793070/2017-gaming-news-review-nintendo-switch-pubg-pewdiepie

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