I feel like I haven’t bought something, much less liked a new release that has come out and it seems so few for the masses, mainly FPS, but where are all the games? Save for Tiny Tina’s Wonderland.

Game development is such a monstrously complex endeavor anyway, and COVID really threw a spanner into the works, having an impact that we'll still be feeling for years to come.

There've still been a ton of compelling games coming out, although most of them are in the not-for-me camp, like Elden Ring. As far as brand new releases go, all I've bought this year are Horizon: Forbidden West, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the Klonoa remasters, GigaBash, Saints Row, and Splatoon 3. And Gran Turismo 7 and Cult of the Lamb if you count stuff I bought for my wife. Which...actually, that's more than I thought. I guess because I bought most of those in the past month and change. And there's more beyond that, if you count new releases I played on Game Pass, like Shredder's Revenge.

I guess you could argue that objectively there's less of interest since game sales are down a good bit year-over-year. Sometimes droughts can be a good thing, pulling you out of your comfort zone and prompting you to try games you might not otherwise. Weirdly, that's why the Wii U wound up being one of my favorite consoles: because I wanted to get my money's worth out of it, so I tried games I ordinarily wouldn't have and wound up loving.

But we're about to get into the peak time of year, and there's a lot to look forward to: Pokemon Violet/Scarlet, God of War: Ragnarok, the Mario + Rabbids sequel, Midnight Suns, Gotham Knights, Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, Bayonetta 3, Modern Warfare II, Sonic Frontiers (maybe?), Goat Simulator III, The Callisto Protocol, and...okay, I'm probably just speaking for myself with some of those. Still! Not a bad way to finish the year.

I feel like the last *new* game I bought was Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart a year and a half ago. Oh and Metroid Dread. So yeah, no new releases getting my attention.

It seems like there's only really huge AAA games, or small indie games, and almost nothing in between those two extremes.