Year of reckoning

Reviewing another difficult 12 months across the game industry

Having begun the year with a special edition entitled ‘Look Forward’, it’s inevitable that we end it by doing the opposite – and, in the tradition of predictions revisited after the fact, consider how the ensuing reality differed. The scope of Edge 355 wasn’t necessarily limited to these 12 months, and we even called a few of the pushbacks (hello, Horizon Forbidden West), but, even in our COVIDtempered optimism, we might have reasonably expected more of the forthcoming games discussed to see daylight in 2021: of the 56 namechecked, exactly half have seen final release.

That’s indicative of the industry at large, of course, as the long-term effects of the pandemic continue to bite. God Of War Ragnarök, Dying Light 2, Gotham Knights, Ghostwire: Tokyo – we could fill this page with a list of high-profile titles originally due in 2021 and subsequently pushed into next year or beyond. It’s becoming almost standard practice even for newly announced games, with Marvel’s Midnight Suns and the Saints Row reboot both amending their release dates within weeks of introducing themselves to the world. On the physical front, 2021 has been quiet, with Steam Deck, Playdate and Intellivision Amico all pushed into next year, leaving the Switch OLED Edition and Analogue Pocket (see p12) as the year’s most notable hardware releases.