2025 is stacked with high-profile releases across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and PC, with publishers leaning into fewer-but-bigger launches and smarter cross-play. If you’re deciding what to preorder, clear your calendar for a slate that blends record-setting open worlds, auteur-driven experiments, and a handful of crowd-pleasing shooters poised to dominate multiplayer charts.
Open-world epics lead the charge
Grand Theft Auto VI is the gravitational center of the year. The debut trailer amassed a Guinness-certified record for non-music YouTube views within a day, which underscores staggering demand. Expect a return to Vice City with a dual-protagonist story, social-media-infused mischief, and the kind of living-city simulation Rockstar iterates on better than anyone. If GTA Online’s lifetime revenue and engagement are any guide, its successor ecosystem will be the real endgame.
Monster Hunter Wilds is Capcom’s blockbuster swing, evolving a series that has sold nearly 100 million units according to Capcom’s investor reports. The pitch: seamless biomes, volatile storms that reshape hunts, more expressive monsters, and full cross-play at launch. For co-op squads, the friction between realism (ecosystems reacting to your presence) and arcade action (14 weapons, deep builds) should prove irresistible.
Action and RPG heavy-hitters
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach doubles down on Hideo Kojima’s singular blend of traversal, tension, and celebrity-studded performances. Powered by Decima, it’s built to exploit current-gen hardware with dense weather simulation, tactile DualSense feedback, and a more dangerous overworld. If the first game’s community-built infrastructure hooked you, the sequel’s larger scale and stranger threats look like a bold escalation.
Fable is set to reintroduce a quintessentially British tone to fantasy RPGs. Playground Games brings open-world craftsmanship and a playful morality system back to Albion, complete with tall tales, vegetable-throwing humor, and modernized combat. The studio’s tech pedigree suggests a world that loads fast, reacts to your choices, and rewards goofing around as much as heroic mainlining.
Nintendo’s big exclusives
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finally puts Samus back in the first-person spotlight. Retro Studios’ return signals methodical exploration, environmental storytelling, and boss encounters designed around precision. The series’ cadence of scanning, puzzle layering, and combat upgrades is timeless; the intrigue here is how far the new entry pushes AI behavior and verticality without sacrificing that clean, readable HUD design Prime perfected.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A is positioned as the next meaningful shake-up for the franchise. Set in Lumiose City during a sweeping urban redevelopment, it promises the open-area freedom that made Legends: Arceus a hit, with denser city ecology and more dynamic trainer–Pokémon interactions. The Pokémon Company’s cadence suggests quality-of-life upgrades for catching, crafting, and team-building systems that keep longtime fans and newcomers equally engaged.
Shooters and co-op worth tracking
Doom: The Dark Ages takes id Software’s blistering gunplay into a grim, medieval prequel. The saw-shield and flail expand the series’ “combat chess,” pushing you closer to enemies while preserving the rhythmic weapon-swapping that defines modern Doom. Expect immaculate performance targets and animation priority that make even 120 Hz modes feel surgical.
EA has indicated that the next Battlefield is slated for this year, with multiple studios contributing. After years of iteration, the series tends to shine when scale and destruction are the stars—think emergent chaos, squad synergies, and sandbox tools that turn every match into a highlight reel. Annualized juggernauts like Call of Duty will, as usual, command attention in the premium shooter lane, but Battlefield’s comeback narrative is one of 2025’s most compelling subplots.
Indies and AA surprises to watch
Hades II is expected to exit early access and lock in its definitive build. Supergiant’s iterative cadence—tightening weapon aspects, layering meta-progression, and tuning difficulty curves—has already produced a ferociously replayable sequel. If its first outing is any benchmark, expect awards chatter and another run at the top of user-voted charts.
Hollow Knight: Silksong remains the white whale. Ratings board activity and frequent showcase cameos keep anticipation high; should it arrive, expect a faster, more aggressive combat loop, a richer quest structure, and the kind of hyper-precise platforming that speedrunners feast on. On PC, keep an eye on action RPGs and survival sandboxes moving from early access to 1.0—these often punch above their budgets once systems solidify and mod scenes emerge.
Why these games matter
Circana’s market tracking shows that big tentpole launches concentrate spending and hours played, while cross-platform support and live updates extend tails. The Entertainment Software Association’s consumer research continues to highlight how co-op and social features drive retention—one reason you see cross-play, cross-progression, and community tools baked into most of this list.
Finally, a note on platforms and performance: current-gen-only development is now the norm, so expect faster loading, denser worlds, and more ambitious AI. As always, release plans can shift, but the 2025 calendar is already deeper than most years. If you value scale and polish, GTA VI and Monster Hunter Wilds are safe bets; if you crave the unusual, Death Stranding 2 and Doom’s brutal prequel should be near the top of your list.