Did the 2024 Summer Game Shows Reveal This Generation’s Game Changers?

Earlier this year, I laid out my opinion that the current console generation, despite its wealth of enjoyable games, hasn’t really brought anything that clearly sets it apart from the last cycle. Now that we’re on the other side of the summer gaming showcases, I’m still wondering when “that game,” will arrive (if it’s anything other than Grand Theft Auto VI)… but there’s a lot to look forward to regardless.

I’ve spent multiple posts asking “when is it gonna feel like this generation has really started?” Looking back at the best currently-available games that only support PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, I think it already has started but it was a slow rollout. Games like Helldivers II or Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely make these consoles worth owning, but I don’t feel like anything in the last four years has shaken the foundations of the industry like Halo: Combat Evolved or Fortnite did.

I don’t remember if I previously mentioned that market report saying that the most popular games today mostly came out several years ago on the last-gen consoles. A lot of people are just using the new machines to keep playing Fortnite or Rocket League with better graphics. Somebody else recently said that like half of Call of Duty players on PlayStation are still on PS4, which is why Activision is releasing its fifth cross-gen COD later this year.

We’re still living in a post-Fortnite, post-Overwatch world. Can anything showcased at this month’s presentations move the industry into the next era?

One of the recently-unveiled games that brought this subject to my mind is Assassin’s Creed Shadows — the first game in the series that only supports current-generation consoles. It’s only the second generational transition in the franchise’s history, but based on what we’ve seen and read so far, it’s unclear whether it’ll feel like the leap from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to Assassin’s Creed Unity that left behind the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2014.

I know it’s gonna have a more dynamic lighting system than the last couple entries, dynamic seasons, and the currently available gameplay footage hints at better physics reactions. Maybe the final game will look better and have deeper systems than was ever possible previously, and mixing up the two-character dynamic has potential, but right now it mostly looks like another remix of the last few games. Come to think of it, though, arguably the franchise’s biggest change came with Assassin’s Creed Origins in the middle of the last generation, so maybe hardware transitions aren’t what really matters for pushing the series to new places.

Beyond that, from what I can tell, the three most technically ambitious games currently slated for release in 2024 are Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Black Myth: Wukong, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Other games like Avowed, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will probably be terrific, but MSF24, Wukong, and Chornobyl look like the kinds of games that immediately justify new hardware as soon as you look at them.

Honestly, even the last Flight Simulator was one of the most technically ambitious games when it came out in 2020, but the mainstream console market doesn’t really pay attention to simulation games like that. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is.

Wukong was one of the first games of this hardware cycle that quickly drew strong attention as soon as Game Science shadow dropped the first trailer. It was one of those things where we weren’t even sure the footage was real, but recent hands-on previews are surprisingly positive. I’m still gonna wait for reviews, though.

That game and Chornobyl might be among the first really big Unreal Engine 5 titles. That engine started to truly break cover last year with Immortals of Aveum and Robocop Rogue City, but Tekken 8 and Hellblade II are probably the first games running on it to gain real notoriety.

Part of me hopes Chornobyl becomes a breakout after everything that has gone on with that franchise and its developer. PC folks still think the first game is one of the best of all time, nothing else quite like it has emerged since its release in 2007, and GSC Game World has had to survive an actual war to get the sequel out of the door.

In 2025, outside of the 800lb gorilla that is GTAVI, I’m mainly looking at Doom: The Dark Ages, Monster Hunter Wilds, Death Stranding 2, and 1943: Rise of Hydra. Three of those are sequels making full hardware transitions. The Doom trailer already offered a hint of what it might add to the franchise, but what will Monster Hunter do that you couldn’t do on PS4? You know Hideo Kojima is gonna think of something crazy for Death Stranding that just about no one will have thought of before.

Looking back, a few major franchises have already made that leap in ways that justify the new consoles: Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Final Fantasy, and I would even count Zelda. I also think Starfield is absolutely a generational tech leap over Fallout 4, just a flawed one.

I also wanna reiterate that a lot of other fun, magnificently crafted games have come and will come to modern platforms without necessarily pushing the hardware to its limits. It’s just that nothing seems able to jolt the public consciousness past the games that most people seem to have been playing for the better part of a decade now.

Maybe nothing really will, at least not with the suddenness that came with prior console cycle transitions. So far, this generation has felt like a PC or phone upgrade, and those are environments where users with the latest hardware are in the minority, so playing lower-end games on aged hardware becomes the norm. Meanwhile, everyone seems to be waiting on GTA to move the needle by default.