The Gaming Industry in 2021: an Overview

Like 2020 before it, 2021 was another year literally plagued with the chaos and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike 2020, the gaming industry finally started to see the residual ripples of the virus, with a plethora of delays and announcements with dates years into the future — that is also without taking into account the massive supply chain collapse that could last well into the new decade, affecting everything from prospective hardware to the existing roster of console shipments that are already struggling to meet consumer demand. While other mediums like film and television had spent all of the prior year adjusting to the consequences of this new normal, gaming spent its 2021 catching up to speed.

The year began with Nintendo purchasing longtime-developer Next Level Games, who had just released Luigi’s Mansion 3 a year prior. A month later they published Bowser’s Fury, with both events perhaps signaling that the Mario franchise was finally beginning to abandon the New Super Mario Bros. aesthetic that had been so rigidly enforced for the past decade. The massive success of Super Mario Odyssey perhaps suggested to Nintendo that it was time to start taking risks again akin to the complete facelift of Breath of the Wild.

The inverse of this fresh air was a regression towards the same business practices that have cost Nintendo plenty of goodwill with the public over the past four decades. Nintendo stuck to their much-maligned omen of Mario’s demise on March 31st, perhaps inspired by the forced-scarcity gimmick of other boutique publishers, and removed the barely-there Super Mario 3D All-Stars from their digital storefront. Perhaps an overcorrection of the NES and SNES Classic fiascos, physical copies of this game and the limited edition Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch console still are left piling up as unmoved inventory on retailer shelves.

One could make a strong case that maybe the biggest recurring theme in gaming this year, if not the entire pandemic on a sociological level, was one of forced scarcity — from the initial run on toilet paper to unending lotteries for the PlayStation 5. Perhaps the biggest mainstream gaming news of the entire year also came in January with the GameStop short squeeze, in which an army of redditors massively inflated the value of GME stock, with some making millions and many more left with heavy losses or a strict adherence to unfulfilled premonitions of a cult-like apocalyptic Wall Street event. This event (unsurprisingly) coincided with a crypto boom, one that ultimately culminated in a heavy push for the normalization of a new commodity: the non-fungible token (NFT). Instead of owning a physical good or license to a piece of media, users were now paying for the sole right to claim ownership over an intangible good. Of course, this was met with heavy backlash from much of the Internet at large, both for its pyramid scheme potential and its sheer environmental impact. Companies like Ubisoft and GSC Game World dove headfirst into the concept, with the latter forced to do a complete about-face due to intense criticism from the general public. Valve began enforcing an outright ban on all blockchain technology in the Steam marketplace. Nevertheless, other industry dinosaurs like the aforementioned GameStop were undeterred in the embrace of the new revenue stream, and its presence will likely only continue to grow in years to come.

E3 arrived by midyear following a full cancelation in 2020. Sony’s absence was felt yet again, and they did little to pad the rest of the year with announcements for their teetering new console. Microsoft showed up with their standard assortment of gun-heavy sequels, and conglomerate publishers like Bandai Namco made barely-there appearances with nothing to show for their lost year. Nintendo Direct presentations for the remainder of 2021 were largely headlined by 2022 titles, from a surprising new 3D Kirby platformer that suggests the aforementioned Breath of the Wild influence on the publisher’s willingness to try something new to mere wellness-checks on Bayonetta and Zelda. The 35th anniversary celebration for The Legend of Zelda was surprisingly limited to few new products, including a $60 port of a decade-old Wii game and yet another instance of forced-scarcity, perhaps the most egregious yet: a $25 amiibo that is required to add a needed quality-of-life improvement to an aging game.

Maybe the biggest news for Nintendo at E3 was actually the absence of Switch hardware revision that had been speculated and ‘leaked’ by alleged insiders over the course of maybe half a decade. When it finally surfaced a month later, the Nintendo Switch OLED Model was not the ‘Switch Pro’ that had been touted for years. Instead, it’s only significant improvement (aside from a nice sturdier stand) was the addition of a titular OLED screen. Anyone who has actually experienced the device can probably tell you what a massive upgrade the transition from LCD to OLED display tech is for this console, but many others were left with a sour taste in their mouth from the whole affair. Even those interested in upgrading were left with severe shortages at most retailers, something that is only expected to get worse moving into 2022.

Fortunately, a glimmer of hope arrived before the end of the year. Masahiro Sakurai made the impossible possible, and Sora from the Kingdom Hearts franchise finally arrived in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate after two decades of dreams and intense speculation. Sora was without a doubt the most requested fighter for the Super Smash Bros. series, but he faced the licensing nightmare of The Walt Disney Company calling the shots. His inclusion fulfilled the childhood wishes of entire generations, but it was bittersweet as it also signaled the abrupt end of all future Super Smash Bros. content for the foreseeable future.

Of course, in true Nintendo tradition, this was immediately blunted by two subsequent announcements: a cloud-gaming ‘port’ of the Kingdom Hearts trilogy to the Switch and a pricey ‘expansion’ to Nintendo Switch Online. The latter added Nintendo 64 and SEGA Genesis games alongside a new batch of Animal Crossing DLC, but viewers who did the math were quick to conclude that the long-awaited new features were simply not worth the excessive price hike for a service that had already failed to deliver.

All of the above seem to reinforce an unsettling premonition for the entire industry. The business model is quickly changing, not just from physical to digital, but from ownership to rental. With the advent of subscription services, cloud gaming, and even the link-rot of non-fungible tokens, companies are moving to eliminate permanence from equation. The things you paid for in 2021 may no longer be guaranteed or even functional moving into the future, and we could be on the cusp of losing history to corporate malfeasance.

The end of the year came with a nice present though. Analogue finally managed to release its much-delayed Pocket console, and despite the mountains of criticism they have received for clinging onto modes of gaming past, it truly does feel like a love letter to a bygone era. Right now the handheld system is plagued with compatibility issues, EverDrive problems, basic features promised in firmware updates, and the looming vacuum caused by the absence of an official jailbreak, but it still feels good to know that there is still someone out there dedicated to preserving the minutiae of this medium.

It is an understatement to say that the future of the consumer holding any agency over their entertainment experience is now an uncertainty. Disc drives are a dying breed, pleas for backwards compatibility are all but ignored on consoles like the PlayStation 5 or barely fleshed out in the Xbox family, and nerds online have to have to rally behind a dying retailer — one that they always vocally detested — in an ironic effort to save the experience of buying physical media. But I take solace in the fact that I can still play Pokémon Yellow exactly as it was intended — and in the best possible quality — heading into 2022.