Video games new releases Q1 2022: what to expect

Gone are the times when there was certainty about the trend of the videogame market during the year. The big releases are no longer concentrated only in the Christmas period, as evidenced by the period of fire represented by the first quarter of 2022, with February playing the lion’s share with many high-caliber games. At one time the beginning of the year was considered as a time to cool down, after the holiday period that historically has always been the one in which all the major blockbusters came out.

For some years the situation has changed because many publishers have started to prefer more strategic locations for games, trying to find spaces as pristine as possible for productions that need more breathing space. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic to further upset the plans and make any sensible planning of outputs based on market needs practically impossible.

A law that continues to be followed very strictly, however, is that of the fiscal year: there are no strategies or pandemics that hold in this case, if a game is functional to the annual budget of the company, it must be released within the term of the year relating to financial movements, usually 31 March. For this series of reasons, a truly significant amount of releases were concentrated in the first quarter of 2022, rather outside of any standard logic on the organization of market launches. At the expense will be the wallets of the most hardened players, as well as the social life of the latter, who in the first months of next year will find themselves spending some time locked in the house and in front of the screen.

Let’s see why.