We’re now a full month into 2024, and we’ve had some pretty exciting games to start the new year. With titles such as Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Tekken 8 all dropping in January alone, we’ve already received plenty of great stuff to play this year. Perhaps most impressive is that we’ve had this kind of start to the year without any of the major console publishers really getting their feet wet.
While we’ve certainly heard news and updates from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, none of the “Big Three” have really started dropping their biggest games just yet. Even still, we’ve slowly started to see how the 2024 lineups for these publishers are shaping up, and we’ve definitely got some big stuff to look forward to from all three of them. But while all three have great options for the coming year, who’s looking the best right now? Let’s try to answer that: here’s a look at every first-party publisher’s prospective lineup in 2024, and our expectations of who will be this year’s biggest winner.
Xbox
Oh, dear…Xbox’s exclusive game situation for 2024 is interesting, to say the least. Coming off of a 2023 that had exciting titles like Hi-Fi Rush and Starfield, Xbox’s first-party publishing arm looks like it’ll keep bringing some big hitters this year. Most notably, though, where last year saw fellow Microsoft-owned publisher Bethesda doing the heavy lifting, Xbox Game Studios is swinging back this year with some big releases: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II will finally see its long-awaited release in May, while titles like Ara: History Untold, Avowed, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Towerborne are all set to drop sometime this year.
As the console publisher who has arguably struggled the most with releasing consistent, high-quality exclusives, Xbox looks to be in a good position for 2024. Beyond there being a greater number of first-party titles, the arrival of games fans have anticipated for years (such as Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Avowed) only makes this year an even more exciting one for Microsoft. Bethesda will also get in on the fun with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launching sometime this year, and while it may be a bit too early for fellow Microsoft-owned publisher Activision Blizzard to bring many exclusives, we could start to see some early plans come to fruition later this year.
So with all of that, why the “oh dear” at the beginning? Six exclusives in a year is a pretty strong number, some highly anticipated games are finally arriving, and there’s a solid diversity as far as genres and styles. How could there be any air of skepticism? With how things are gearing up for Microsoft, what could stop them? Well, simply put, the one thing that could stop Microsoft this year is…itself.
Already a publisher that doesn’t exactly release “exclusive” games (since all of its titles receive simultaneous PC releases), a bevy of rumors have started to fly that Xbox is planning to bring some of its exclusive titles to the PlayStation and Nintendo Switch this year. Initially, it started somewhat innocuously with rumors of Hi-Fi Rush moving to other consoles, but things have since snowballed, with talk that major titles like Sea of Thieves and Starfield could be losing their “exclusivity.” And to make matters wilder, not only are upcoming titles like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle rumored to be getting releases on other consoles, but even Xbox’s biggest franchises in Halo and Gears of War are not safe from these rumors.
So even if Xbox’s lineup for 2024 looks promising, how much faith can we put into these games being potential system-selling “exclusives” if we know in the back of our minds that they could come to other platforms? As much as the sheer idea of console exclusivity is polarizing, video game consoles need to have a library of standout exclusives; if all video game consoles just stopped offering exclusive titles and their libraries were entirely the same, what would be the point of consoles other than being cheaper, weaker alternatives to PC gaming? Thus, while Xbox’s lineup for 2024 sounds promising so far, we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of Xbox’s planned “business update event” (as Phil Spencer words it) to know how many of these games will remain exclusive to Xbox’s ecosystem.
PlayStation
Well, in the meantime, at least Xbox has a larger amount of first-party titles to look forward to. In the case of its main competitor, Sony…you know what you’re getting at this point. In recent history, Sony has focused on releasing some high-quality exclusives, but only releasing a few such games in a given year. Therefore, while PlayStation owners will get some pretty great titles, they’re gonna have to wait a pretty long time for them. 2024 looks to be no different, though Sony’s overall approach raises a bit of an eyebrow.
Disregarding remasters (of which Sony has already shipped The Last of Us Part II Remastered and is set to reissue Until Dawn later this year) as well as the yearly MLB: The Show entry, Sony has four major exclusives on the docket this year. Without question, that’s naturally a huge improvement over the…one major exclusive Sony shipped in 2023 (Spider-Man 2), and there are a few noteworthy titles to look forward to. Beyond the recently released Helldivers II, PlayStation fans have Rise of the Rōnin, Stellar Blade, and Concord on the horizon for 2024. More good news is that we know more definitively than Xbox when these games are releasing: Rise of the Rōnin releases in March, while Stellar Blade follows in April. PlayStation is also set to offer some big third-party exclusives this year, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the Silent Hill 2 Remake, adding even more excitement to their lineup.
Sony dropping three first-party exclusives in three consecutive months is most certainly a good start, though it does open up some question marks regarding the back end of the year. While it can be safely assumed that Concord will arrive sometime in the second half, Sony’s current lineup is completely empty for the back end of 2024 (Until Dawn re-release notwithstanding). Of course, it can be safely assumed we’ll learn more about its plans in some kind of larger PlayStation Showcase this Summer, but Sony’s recent State of Play coming and going with very little in the way of 2024 first-party releases raises a huge question mark.
What’s more, Sony’s approach as far as exclusives this year is interesting: outside of Concord — which is being handled by Firewalk Studios — none of the aforementioned first-party titles this year are being handled by in-house Sony development teams. Helldivers II was the work of Arrowhead Game Studios, Rise of the Rōnin will be handled by Team Ninja, and Stellar Blade comes from Shift Up Second Eve Studios. While this is a great move for Sony to make sure some first-party content comes to the PlayStation, it does raise a larger question as to what Sony’s in-house developers have been up to, especially given that several of them have been very quiet as of late.
Bend Studio, Media Molecule, and Sucker Punch Studios are just a few of the noteworthy Sony-owned development teams that have yet to ship a major new title on the PlayStation 5. Furthermore, studios like Team Asobi and Bluepoint Games have not been heard from since launching the PlayStation 5 with Astro’s Playroom and the Demon’s Souls remake, respectively, raising questions about what these teams have been working on. Not helping matters is that Sony, despite owning several VR-based studios and releasing the PlayStation VR2 at a high asking price, has no first-party VR2 titles announced at this point. All in all, while the year is off to a solid start, it appears Sony could really use another big showcase to truly show what’s up its sleeve in 2024.
Nintendo
Marching to the beat of its own drum as the publisher always does, Nintendo came out of 2023 as the clear winner as far as first-party titles. The only publisher of the three console manufacturers that releases its games truly exclusively (since none of them come to PC), The Big N blazed through the year with an excellent showing as far as quality and quantity of exclusive titles. Beyond releasing major titles on a near-monthly basis, Nintendo dropped some of the year’s best and most acclaimed games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Pikmin 4. Even six years after the Switch’s release, Nintendo was finding plenty of new and creative ways to coax as much life as it could out of the console-handheld hybrid.
2024, on the other hand, might not have quite the same explosiveness that 2023 had…at least, not right away. Already, Nintendo has released Another Code: Recollection, a remake of a pair of point-and-click Nintendo DS games, and the publisher does look to have some exciting games planned for the first half of the year. The Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake and Princess Peach: Showtime! release in February and March, respectively, and from there, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD and the Paper-Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake (the latter of which fans have been waiting an incredibly long time for) seem likely to drop in the first half of the year. This all means that Switch players will definitely have some fun stuff to play early on.
With that said, it’s easy to see why this slate feels quieter than 2023’s. Compared to last year’s lineup, which saw a healthy mix of new games and reissues, Nintendo’s 2024 lineup is much more centered around re-releases. Worth pointing out: Princess Peach: Showtime! is still the only “new” game on Nintendo’s current schedule, as everything else is something gamers have already played. And sure, several of these titles being from-the-ground-up “remakes” (as opposed to simple ports) does help in a way, but it’s still worth wondering whether Nintendo will have more fully “new” games throughout the year.
Another concern thus far is how Mario-centric the lineup is. With Another Code: Recollection now out, the rest of 2024’s lineup is all centered around Mario characters. It’s not surprising to see Nintendo focus so much on Mario — beyond being their mascot, did you see how much money The Super Mario Bros. Movie made last year? — and sure, there’s a decent amount of diversity as far as genres and who each game is centered on. Still, fans are almost certainly going to demand to see the company’s other characters alongside Mario and his friends.
To Nintendo’s credit, this is the time that we get our first of the (usually) three Nintendo Direct showcases in a year, which could mean that the rest of 2024’s lineup will be revealed sooner rather than later. What’s more, Nintendo’s current approach makes sense in hindsight: rumors of the publisher’s next console have been reaching a fever pitch, to the point where 2024 could finally be the year that we see the elusive “Switch 2” (if that’s truly what it is). And while Nintendo’s been coy about new hardware as of late, the emphasis on a singular IP (that so happens to be its biggest franchise), combined with the larger amount of re-releases, indicates that we’re entering the “twilight” of the current Switch’s life. So while 2024 might seem a touch slow for Nintendo at the moment, don’t be surprised if things suddenly explode in the next month or two.
Winner: Far Too Early to Tell
When it comes to deciding which console manufacturer’s 2024 lineup seems the most promising…it’s a little hard to tell right now. Last year, it felt like there was a very clear winner for who had the best exclusives, but things look a lot fuzzier in 2024. Without question, each major console has something big to look forward to this year, but each console comes with its own set of concerns.
Xbox is finally dropping some of its most anticipated Xbox Series X|S titles in 2024, but the idea that many of them won’t stay exclusive for long could take the wind out of their sails. PlayStation is front-loading some exciting titles this year, but the fact that so many of its in-house studios haven’t been heard from in a while raises questions about what the rest of the year could look like. Meanwhile, Nintendo is once again going to offer plenty of quantity for Switch owners, but the emphasis on re-releases (and Mario) may make the year a touch less exciting for some, at least until the “Switch 2” is ready to be shown.
Even after weighing all the pros and cons, 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty neck-and-neck race between the three teams. Furthermore, all three have something to lose in the new year: Nintendo could be volatile in 2024 depending on whether the next system is ready for this year and how well the company can create excitement for it. Microsoft could finally become a juggernaut between its combination of owned publishers, but if it loses Halo, it loses Xbox, in a sense. And PlayStation’s got an exciting first half lined up, but the “quality over quantity” approach could eventually reach a breaking point if Sony continues to play the waiting game with exclusives.
For now, though, it’s a new year, and typically a new year comes with a new mindset. So with that, let’s try for a minute to focus on the positives for each publisher this year. All of them are giving fans some exciting games to look forward to, and each of them has at least one game that fans have been talking about for years. In many ways, 2024 could be a transitional year for gaming, and there could be some major sea changes to the landscape of video games that throw some players off.
But through all of it, the one constant is great games, and it looks like 2024 will have plenty of those, both big and small. Great games transcend all the media circus and controversy in a given year, and it’s what keeps us coming back for more. It’s what keeps us talking and appreciating this beautiful medium years down the line, and no matter what the industry goes through, there will always be great games to give us some escape, comfort, and even lessons in the wake of life’s toughest moments. No matter which console manufacturer wins in 2024, gamers win when the games are great. Here’s to a new year that brings even more transcendent gaming experiences that keep us talking far into the future. Game on, 2024.
