Is 2017 in danger of peaking too early?

2017 has been a pretty odd year so far when it comes to game releases. It’s as though the year got a little too excited and finished early if you get my not at all subtle innuendo. So far this year we have had a startling number of AAA titles from big developers and distributors, with the likes of Mass Effect: Andromeda, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Nier: Automata, Halo Wars 2, Resident Evil 7, For Honor, Sniper Elite 4, and more being released in the first three months of the year, and what seems to be the majority of other games being due by midSeptember. Are companies becoming so afraid of releasing in a glutted Christmas/holiday season that they are delaying to the start of the next year, or is this year just a strange one overall?

On the tech front, this is the month when things officially got interesting again. The 1080Ti is here and it’s a monster, but the most interesting tech factor at the moment is AMD releasing their Ryzen CPUs. Although the R7 chips are being outpaced by their similarly specced Intel counterparts for the most part, their release has already prompted Intel to drop the price of their chips to compete with the much cheaper Ryzen CPUs, and the release of the R5 should herald the same results. While I’m about the furthest you can get from being a free market libertarian, I do like seeing those odd occasions when the market does manage to sort itself out through competition. For the longest time, Team Red has prompted both Team Green and Intel to up their game or improve their prices to compete. When it comes to computer components, competition is always a good thing.

This issue also contains one of the most enjoyable, if gruelling jobs of the year - collecting and collating reader votes for Game of the Year. It’s always fun to see what people think, and to be reminded of great moments in gaming. I like anecdotes, and every year you guys give them to me en-masse.