In our traditional review of another gaming year that we are leaving behind, it is difficult to find positive things. But we have to try.
I don’t know why, but as soon as we have an overview of the gaming year, we are mostly reminded of the bad news. Is it because we remember negative things longer or is the state of gaming getting worse and worse? I leave it to you to judge, but texts like this are not there to depress people, so I set myself the task of finding some positive news in the overview of the year of gamers 2025. I will let you know at the end if I succeeded in that.
So, let’s follow the already established custom to see what marked the world of video games in the year that is coming to an end.
Cancellations and shutdowns of games
Sometimes we have a year with a lot of delays, but this year was not like that. It was even worse – because a huge number of games were cancelled, probably the largest in all 25 years of this century. Here’s a quick reminder of just some of the games we won’t be playing. Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Perfect Dark, Everwild, Contraband, Transformers: Reactivate… And those are just the ones that were announced. The Mandalorian game from the creators of Titanfall was also canceled, the development of the God of War multiplayer game was stopped, there will be no new MMO game from the creators of The Elder Scrolls Online…
In addition, we had numerous game shutdowns. Some disappeared because they were not popular enough, such as XDefiant, Anthem, Dauntless, Steel Hunters or Specter Divide… And you may say that no one will regret them, but even popular games end support for old platforms. Genshin Impact, Rust and PUBG: Battlegrounds are no longer playable on PS4/XBO consoles, no more playing Beat Saber on PSVR, no FIFA has live multiplayer anymore (ok, maybe that’s not a bad thing)…
All this gives the impression of an industry that blindly chases passing trends, in which everyone would like to have their share of the pie before the pie is baked. It is clear that not all games can be successful or realized, but in 2025 it was emphasized that a significant part of the gaming industry does not care about the interests of the players, but focuses exclusively on the race for bags of money.
Banning and censoring games
Back when games weren’t being canceled and shut down, some organizations tried to dictate what was acceptable in video games and what wasn’t. Erotic, pornographic and sexual themed games were primarily targeted. An Australian group of souls has found a way to pressure Steam and through transaction service providers to force Valve to change the rules for publishing games on Steam. They say they protect children from immorality, but maybe that’s a roundabout worldview?
However, not only games with nudity and perversions were controversial. The dust also arose regarding the game Horses, which was banned from being sold on Steam and Epic – allegedly without a specific explanation. The developer says that their case was covered by the media, but that other developers daily encounter insufficiently clear rules about what can and cannot be shown in games. And it is not very transparent who is the moral judge of all this.
The increase in the price of everything gamer
Gaming has always been an expensive hobby, we won’t lie. Only in 2025 did it grow into an even higher category of luxury. The PlayStation 5 not only went up in price, but Sony retroactively decided to reduce the disk capacity of the PS5 Slim Digital consoles – without lowering the price, of course. Xbox went up in price twice in one year, and an even bigger blow was the increase in the price of Game Pass, which now brings new games only in the most expensive tier. Nintendo was the first to break the psychological barrier with a price of 90 euros for the physical edition of Mario Kart World…
Salvation is in PC gaming, many thought. And then at the end of the year, the price of memory skyrocketed and it was only a matter of time before it took everything else down with it. We’re hearing rumors that Samsung is stopping the production of SATA SSDs, Nvidia is planning to cut production capacity for GeForce graphics cards, and none of this bodes well for better times for gaming. It’s expensive – and it’s going to get even more expensive.
AI hysteria from both ends
In the year 2025, AI technology made a real breakthrough in the video game industry. Gamers became allergic as soon as developers use generative AI to make games that they then charge for. But the cat is already out of the bag and won’t be coming back – already 52% of manufacturers are using AI in game development in one way or another. And sometimes we go over it when we don’t know about the application of AI technology or the game is otherwise good so it doesn’t bother us. And sometimes we play a witch hunt, demanding that video game development be an absolutely pure business without AI technology. It might be best if the concept drawings aren’t created digitally at all so we can be 100% sure the AI had nothing to do with them…
The situation is complicated and we are definitely heading towards some wild and uncertain future, while no one knows exactly where the application of AI technology will take us. Perhaps the development of expensive video games will no longer take half a decade. Maybe video games make us soulless. And maybe AI will end up playing with us. Be that as it may, in 2025 it all boils over and the situation becomes heated.
Xbox out of the race
Microsoft has decided in 2025 that Xbox is any device that can play Xbox games. But when Xbox games can be played on any device, then Xbox is nothing more than a concept. Especially when Halo, Gears, and Forza are on PlayStation, and the portable Xbox and the next Xbox are Windows PC devices… the same ones that forcefully push Copilot AI features that few users want.
It’s a bit frightening how quickly Xbox has collapsed as a brand, losing the trust of even the most die-hard fans. In America these holidays, Xbox consoles were not even the third best-selling hardware behind PlayStation and Nintendo, people were more attracted to some anonymous console without a controller. Because of all this, we can say that the Xbox practically became an Ex-Box this year.
At least Nintendo is doing well…
In 2025, Nintendo broke the curse that every other console would fail them financially in sales. Not only is the Switch 2 selling better and faster than the first Switch, it’s also the fastest selling console in console history. And that’s quite an impressive achievement as it’s also Nintendo’s most expensive console to date.
This can be seen both negatively and positively, but we need positives, so we will say that this is definitely a win for the video game industry. First of all, the success of the Switch 2 shows that there is still room for growth in the console market, whatever Microsoft and Sony think about it. Second, a fast-growing platform like the Switch 2 provides developers with profitability and the opportunity to expand the reach of their games, primarily to the younger generation of gamers that the Switch 2 brings together.
Unexpected indie successes
We already know that indie games can be huge successes. Terrarria and Stardew Valley combined sold more copies than Red Dead Redemption 2. Regardless, 2025 was definitely marked by successful indie games. We are talking about how the cooperative hit REPO sold 15 million copies, Peak reached 10 million players, Schedule I about eight million, Hollow Knight Silksong seven million… These are some of the best-selling games of the current year, and a good part of gamers have not even heard of them.
And then we have those successful independent teams who had the help of an external publisher. New IPs like Clair Obscur and ARC Raiders have collectively sold more than 10 million copies. Split Fiction sold more than four million copies, Ball x Pit sold a million… It’s nice to see that 2025 was marked by so many new names and that so many achieved commercial success.
China’s gaming machinery has exploded
While belts are being tightened in the West and developers are being asked to play it safe, China’s gaming industry has taken off and is becoming increasingly influential. The new generation of Chinese games comes with bigger ambitions and an even more lavish presentation. Maybe the Chinese games are thematically similar and harder to remember, but check out Phantom Blade Zero, Swords of Legend or Blood Message – it’s crazy how these things look!
We saw with Black Myth: Wu Kong how quality things can come from China, not just copies of what has already proven successful. So he is happy that that part of the world is also getting stronger on the map of the gaming industry.
Historic moment: Linux accounts for 3% of PC gaming!
A bit sarcastic, but it is interesting that the Linux operating system became attractive in the context of gaming in 2025. We are still far from it being able to serve as a real alternative to Windows, but in certain scenarios it actually provides more options than Windows itself. And you have to appreciate this even if you are not interested in Linux at all. Because competition is good, and Windows has not had competition in the context of gaming for decades.
Now that Steam has sided with Linux and is developing its hardware ecosystem, Microsoft suddenly realizes that they have a lot of work to do if they want to make Windows the best platform for gaming. As long as Linux never reaches even 5% of Steam users, something has started and something is happening.
And what happens to this text is that it has reached its end. There are also a few positive things to point out so that it’s not all a total bummer. The least we can hope for is that it will be the same next year.