Industry analysts claim Helldivers 2 and Palworld aren’t enough to make 2024 a great year for gaming

We must admit, we wasn’t too hopeful that 2023 was going to be a good year for gaming. Over the past few years since the world changed in 2020, We haven’t been as excited about new games as we once was. We’ve put it down to developers still feeling the effects of trying to adapt to a new way of making games while everyone was at home and some game’s suffering as a result. It does seem as though those challenges are now behind the gaming industry and things are back to normal.

But, after being disappointed with 2021 and 2022’s offerings outside of a few titles such as Elden Ring, it left us not expecting much from 2023 except being excited for Resident Evil 4 Remake and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Thankfully, our low expectations were proved wrong as 2023 saw amazing games being released on a near-weekly basis. Some of the highlights included the aforementioned games listed, Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, and Starfield.

We would go as far as to say that 2024 has the potential to be an even better year for gaming. Of course, it will all come down to what is released throughout the rest of the year, but in the first three months, we’ve seen Palworld and Helldivers 2 seemingly come out of nowhere and take the gaming world by storm, with Palworld gaining over 25 million sales in its first month of release, and Helldivers still seeing hundreds of thousands of gamers jump in every day. There have also been some heavy-hitting releases from iconic franchises including Tekken 8 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, with the latter already being a serious contender for Game of the Year. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is set to launch in less than 10 days and Elden Ring will be receiving its massive DLC expansion later this year. 2024 has a lot of potential to be even better than last year, but one industry analyst doesn’t seem to agree.

Industry analyst Mat Piscatella spoke with GameIndustry.biz where he gave a more pessimistic outlook on the year ahead, citing that Palworld and Helldivers 2 aren’t enough to call this year a success yet saying “Helldivers 2 and Palworld have done a lot of heavy lifting early in the year, but we’re up against a comp last year with Hogwarts Legacy, which was a massive hit. So we need another game on top of Helldivers and Palworld to try to comp what Hogwarts was doing last year, and it’s still doing a year later.”

There are a lot of big releases set to launch in 2025, with GTA 6 and Nintendo’s successor to the Switch being the two most notable examples, so it is possible that 2024 could serve as the calm before the storm. But, with Summer Game Fest taking place in June along with the numerous events we will see from the likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, there is still plenty of time for some more Game of the Year contenders to be released. And, we may just end up being surprised by a game we’re currently sleeping on right now. After all, a lot of people weren’t talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 until it was released where it instantly became a generation-defining title.

Piscatella echoed a similar sentiment with how the pandemic affected the market and the release of games over the past few years while noting that there could be some short-term pain as the industry levels back out.

“It’s been a very strange five years in this market, just from the big boom to the hardware shortages to the topping out of engagement, but it’s kind of a thing where we’ve regressed to the long-term trend and now we should be starting to get toward [following] that trend again as we go to 2025. I think it’s short-term pain. Hopefully, I’m not wrong. But it’s going to be a little bit painful for this year.”

Whether 2024 turns out to be a great year for gaming or not, some potentially good games are due to launch throughout the rest of the year, including Little Nightmares 3, Avowed, Senua’s Sage: Hellblade II, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Ark 2.