Breaking down Game Informer’s Top 50 Games of 2015 list.

So, the most recent issue of Game Informer came out, and featured their top 50 games of 2015. I found some interesting numbers in the list, especially considering parent company Gamestop’s general focus on consoles. More after the bump.

I won’t speak about specific games on the list (don’t want to step on their turf, but the interesting page to me was the back one, where they broke out the top 50 games by various statistics, and found some surprising information.

Namely, that this is a hell of a time to be a PC gamer. In just about every category, independent and PC Gaming stood out. Out of the Top 50 games according to Game Informer, 36 of them were available on PC, ahead of everything, including PS4 (31), Xbox One (25), and last gen systems (PS3 had 13, Xbox 360 12). Also, the PC had the most exclusive games to it, a total of 7. We’re still playing a lot of action games (what I sometimes call DudeBro games) as Mature Action games dominated both categories. (ESRB rating and type of game).

But what surprised me is that sequelitis didn’t dominate the list. This is an industry where the top companies don’t want to make a game unless it can be milked for numerous “sequels” (with a new storyline and barely any graphics update) in short succession, but 26 games on this year’s list were the first game in their series or were just plain standalone. That still means 24 games are “new year, new title”, but sometimes it’s interesting to have something new affect the gaming population.