2022 is expected to be the Year of Elden Ring as a result of Starfield’s postponement (lion air delay).
Is there anything that will surpass Elden Ring (lion air delay) as the most popular game of 2022 after delays at Bethesda and Nintendo?
Despite the hundreds of games that are released every year, the occurrence of a true video game sensation is still very uncommon. I’m not just talking about a straightforward bestseller; I’m talking about a book that can eclipse every other book that comes out in the next six months. A game that is still generating news years after its initial release, selling millions of copies, and appearing on new platforms. You could probably count the number of games that meet those requirements over the previous ten years on your fingers: Skyrim, Fortnite, and GTA 5.
I have little doubt that we’ve lately witnessed the newest member of that select group. Elden Ring sprang into the room with an unusually lively spring that quickly drained the other people’s oxygen. In a different era, any of the several blockbuster games that were out between January and April, such as Pokemon Legends Arceus, Horizon Forbidden West, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Dying Light 2, and many more, may have been the most popular game of the time. Although they all appeared to perform well, The Lands Between’s clamorous cacophony just overpowered them, regardless of their critical or monetary success.
Despite all of Elden Ring’s achievements thus far this year, the road to complete dominance has long been paved with possible pitfalls. Horizon Forbidden West was the first of those, and while Aloy may have received the majority of PlayStation gamers’ attention, it has already been eclipsed. God of War: Ragnarok is the next title on Sony’s schedule, but platform exclusivity has proven shown to be no obstacle for FromSoftware. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Nintendo’s next major release, is a console exclusive that comes right after two previous games in the same genre. Meanwhile, assuming Hogwarts Legacy isn’t delayed until 2023 by its enormous scale, millions of Harry Potter enthusiasts might make it a smash blockbuster.
Although there are still many possible challenges, Elden Ring has probably already defeated two of its largest rivals. After delays for both games, 2022 will no longer be the year that both Starfield and the Breath of the Wild sequel are expected to rank among the top games of the year in which they are published. Elden Ring, which has already cemented its position as the year’s biggest game, will now likely be able to ride that train through to December, whether or not it receives any DLC at some point in the upcoming few months. Those two enormous holes in the schedule are good news for other projects hoping to launch towards the end of the year.
The scrolls of Elden
It’s rare to find a smash-hit that is so certain to succeed that you can predict the year’s end headlines more than six months in advance. The frequency isn’t precisely ideal, but I estimate it to be every other year. The last time we had a game this popular was probably Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which appeared virtually unbeatable in the early stages of the epidemic in 2020. Prior to that, there was Fortnite, which seemed to be all I wrote about for the most of 2018. The next most probable candidate is Destiny from 2014, with Skyrim undoubtedly dominating the early 2010s.
The Last of Us 2 ultimately won the majority of that year’s Game of the Year honours, even if Tom Nook and company were the ideal remedy for early 2020. The original Breath of the Wild and God of War won their respective top accolades, despite Fortnite jumping on the battle royale bandwagon in 2017 and helping to launch the metaverse in 2018. Almost every game that you would consider to be the largest of the year has at least one formidable rival for the title. Even Skyrim, which won more than half of the 2011 Game of the Year honours, had to compete with games like Portal 2 and, ironically, Dark Souls.
It’s way too early in the year to be truly talking about Game of the Year, in all honesty. When it comes to quality, there are still many games I haven’t played, many more that haven’t even been revealed yet, and the summer conference season previously known as E3 2022 will undoubtedly unveil more excellent titles that haven’t yet been released. However, there is a significant difference between the largest game of the year and the finest game of the year. The buzz around Elden Ring has been deafening, and now that Breath of the Wild 2 and Starfield are no longer in the running, the few games that are left to compete with it may face difficulties with console exclusivity or future release dates. Even if FromSoft’s most recent game doesn’t top Game of the Year rankings, 2022 is likely to be remembered as the Year of Elden Ring.
