Next Generation beat me to it with an expose on whether or not this has been the greatest year ever for games released. They have fancy charts and graphs and came up with the hard fact that, overall, this is the second worst year since 2001 in terms of actual reviewed games. They go on to point out that while this seems to contradict the feeling that we have had a great year, we have other cause to celebrate. The industry has been able to sustain a four console race, bigger games and sales, and the presence of online across most platforms is all quite admirable.
The only thing I would add to their in depth report is what I noticed as a trend on Metacritic. On all current generation consoles, their top ten list has been dominated by new releases in the last four months. With the exception of Gears of War and Oblivion, the Xbox 360 has eight new titles in the top ten since August. The PS3 top ten list includes five games from the last few months. Super Mario Galaxy is the second highest rated game of all time.
Next Generation speculates that the last generation had a similar spike about a year after their release only to peak three or four years into the life cycle. If in two years, we have another peak in game quality and the top ten lists are all replaced with new games, gamers have very bright future. It also means that someone is probably working on possibly the greatest game of all time right now.
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