2023 looks set to go down in history as one of the best years for games, having been consistently dominated by games that’ll be remembered for years to come as all-time greats. Regardless of which platform you prefer to play your games on, 2023 has delivered a non-stop stream of excellent titles of all kinds, big and small, across varying genres. Which is why, in the eternal rivalry between PlayStation and Xbox, it’s particularly hard to pick a platform that came out on top in 2023.
One of the biggest reasons for that is the fact that, even if you completely take exclusives out of the equation, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have both had incredible years, to the extent that some of the best years of the game have, in fact, been multiplatform third party titles. Even in its early months, 2023 was firing on all cylinders on this front, with games like Dead Space, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor having set the tone. Then, as we moved further into the year, it continued to gather momentum, thanks to the likes of Street Fighter 6, Diablo 4, and Remnant 2. And in its final leg, 2023 well and truly let itself lose, delivering a string of stellar multiplatform games in the form of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, Lies of P, and many others.
And of course, throughout the course of the year, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S both also enjoyed a steady stream of smaller, more contained releases, games that may not have had the widest of scopes or the most blockbuster of development budgets, but managed to leave an indelible mark on those who played them nonetheless. Sea of Stars, Dave the Diver, Dredge, RoboCop: Rogue City, Ghostrunner 2, Season: A Letter to the Future, Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, Jusant, Darkest Dungeon 2, Terra Nil…the list goes on.
But though there’s next to nothing to separate PS5 and Xbox Series X/S where third party titles are concerned, the same cannot be said in other areas. As always, exclusives are what we turn our attention to, and the competition in this area, as it tends to be most years, was a little lopsided in 2023- though perhaps not in the ways most would ordinarily expect. Though exclusives had traditionally been PlayStation’s biggest strength over the years, 2023 was a surprisingly light year for PS5, in spite of the fact that there were a couple of notable titles that stood out.
There was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, of course, a stellar third instalment in Insomniac’s superhero series that was rightly met with widespread praise from critics and audiences alike, and has enjoyed commercial success to match in the weeks since its launch. It may have been the only major first party exclusive to release for PS5 this year, but if Sony was going to release just one of those, it couldn’t have picked a better game than Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. From storytelling to gameplay, from how it improves on its predecessors to how well it leverages the PS5’s hardware and its unique capabilities, Spider-Man 2 was an impressive accomplishment in nearly every way imaginable.
Beyond that, though there were no other major first party PS5 exclusives to speak of, third parties – Square Enix in particular – contributed to the console’s enduring success as well. After all, one of the most notable releases for the console in 2023 was Final Fantasy 16, which may have alienated some fans with how it set itself apart from most of its predecessors, but was, in the end, an excellent action game that stands out as one of the better releases in a year that’s been packed full of all-timers. There was also Forspoken, which… well, the less said about that, the better.
Clearly, then, where exclusives are concerned (the first party kind in particular), 2023 was an uncharacteristically light year for the PlayStation 5. Xbox Series X/S, on the other hand, ended up having a pretty solid year, which, honestly, was exactly what Microsoft needed after the thoroughly disappointing year that was 2022. January brought us Hi-Fi Rush, a game that none of us even knew existed (at least in an official capacity) until the day it was announced and shadow dropped. Even now, as the year winds down, Tango Gameworks’ colourful rhythm action game is still one of the best it has had to offer, which says a lot about how well-received Hi-Fi Rush was.
Beyond that, Xbox’s first party output in 2023 also included the likes of Starfield and Forza Motorsport. Both games come with caveats attached, admittedly, but even though they may not have landed as convincingly as many who played them may have hoped, there’s little doubt that both are excellent experiences in their own rights, to the extent that you can easily pour multiple dozens of hours of your life into each one, if not hundreds. Personally, I absolutely adored Starfield. Having spent over a hundred hours exploring its vast content offerings, it ranks as one of my favourite games of the year.
Of course, not every major Xbox release was a successful one. Redfall launched in May, and turned out to be one of the biggest and most high-profile flops of the year. To see a soulless, bland, boring, and technically broken game coming from a studio like Arkane was particularly disappointing, and that disappointment was made even more pronounced by the fact that Redfall was Arkane’s first Xbox first party exclusive release, was Microsoft’s first $70 game, and was the first AAA first party title to release for Xbox in over a year.
That Xbox managed to ultimately have a solid year on the first party front in spite of the spectacular fumble that was Redfall shouldn’t go unnoticed or unpraised though. Though there is a case to be made for PS5’s output of exclusives favouring quality over quantity, Xbox’s own lineup wasn’t lacking in quality by any means, while also trumping its competition on the basis of pure numbers. Back in May, when the disastrous launch of Redfall was casting an oppressive shadow on all things Xbox, there were many who were pessimistic about how the console would fare in 2023, so Microsoft undoubtedly deserves a great deal of credit for managing to make a remarkable recovery in the months that followed. Add to that the value that Game Pass has continued to provide with its ever-increasing library of games and steady output of day and date releases, and looking back, it’s hard not to be impressed by the year that Microsoft’s duo of current-gen consoles has had.
Regardless of whether you do your gaming on a PS5 or an Xbox Series X or S, 2023 has been an incredible year. It’s hard to point to a single, prolonged window throughout the year that didn’t have any great games to play. On the contrary, in fact, there has been an absolute glut of them, to the point that it’s been all too easy to completely miss out on many of them. If a winner had to be picked between PlayStation and Xbox though? Personally, I’d say Xbox has the edge. After the thoroughly lackluster 2022, that was much needed.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
