The Edge Awards
A look back at the good, the bad and the downright bizarre of a remarkable year in videogames
Yes, 2016 was a hell of a year, but at least in terms of videogames we can say it in the positive sense. The world at large may not look back on the past 12 months with much fondness, yet those of us who were playing games will debate where it sits among the list of the greatest of all time.
It’s certainly up there, if only for the way that 2016 saw so many dreams come true. It was the year VR games finally arrived in the home, backed by some of the biggest technology companies on the planet. Tetsuya Mizuguchi finally got to realise
Rez the way he’d always pictured it in his head. Square Enix managed to ship Final Fantasy XV. Bethesda got its long-in-development Doom reboot out of the door. And, heavens above, we will no longer get to ask Shuhei Yoshida what’s going on with The Last Guardian when we see him at E3, because it’s finally here. All have been successes, to varying extents.
There have been bumps in the road, but the delays are getting shorter, the controversies no longer quite so scandalous, the disappointments not nearly so crushing. This was the year the console generation really got into its groove, and perhaps it’s just as well. Just three years in, the generation is about to change; PS4 Pro and PSVR are already here, posing new headaches to developers who were just starting to feel comfortable. This time next year we’ll have Switch and Scorpio, too. It feels like little coincidence that a year of relative stability has also been one of greatness. We’ll take some of that outside of games, too, please.