The Game Awards Nominees Reveal a Troubling Trend

Nominations for the 12th annual Game Awards were revealed on November 17, 2025, and winners will be announced at the awards show on December 11th. While The Game Awards are far from the only video game award show, they’re by far the biggest, guaranteed to have millions of people from all over the world watching every year, and that naturally means they’re subjected to more scrutiny.

The Game of the Year nominations were largely full of games everyone expected. Titles like Hollow Knight Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all dominated the gaming conversation throughout the year. While the nominations include games from an array of genres, one type of game is absent: classic, big-budget Western “AAA” games were nowhere to be found.

Western Games Dominated Gaming For 2 Generations

In the earlier years of gaming, Japanese games dominated the console side of the industry. Whether it was Nintendo with Mario and Zelda, Capcom with Resident Evil, or Square with Final Fantasy, many of the best console games came from Japanese developers. However, the launch of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 caused an industry-wide shift.

The seventh generation, also known as the “HD era” due to games upgrading to 720/1080p resolution, required a massive adjustment from all developers. Generating true next-gen visuals required increasingly larger teams on longer development cycles. Many Western developers were already prepared for this transition, and they began to deliver some of the most fondly remembered games from the PS3 and 360 generation, like Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Halo 3, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

With their success, fans developed a taste for highly-polished games with engrossing, movie-like narratives, often with militaristic or realistic settings. It was a style all the major Western publishers were more than eager to deliver on.

By comparison, legendary Japanese studios like Capcom, Square Enix, and even Nintendo weren’t fully prepared for the HD era. While Nintendo used innovative gimmicks to stay relevant with the Wii, other developers weren’t so lucky. Many Japanese developers focused their attentions on handheld games, and while this approach succeeded domestically, it didn’t work as well in the West.

Franchises that used to be massive went through a steady decline, and niche franchises became even more niche. Some developers tried to adjust their games to better appeal to Western gamers, but in doing so, they lost what made their games special in the first place.

By the end of the PS3 generation, the majority of gamers were all in on the big, blockbuster AAA games from Western studios. Look no further than the 2013 Video Game Awards’ nominations for Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto V, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, with Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D World as the only standout of the group. However, nothing stays on top forever, and the cracks were already beginning to show for AAA blockbuster gaming.

The AAA Gaming Era Is Officially Over

The shift from Western AAA dominance was gradual, but one thing that sparked the shift was the rise of indie gaming. As major publishers like EA and Ubisoft stopped making AA games, indie developers stepped in to fill the void. Groundbreaking titles like Fez, Journey, and Shovel Knight showed it was possible to achieve success outside the traditional system, while Kickstarter made it easier for fans to support smaller developers.

In the PS4 and Xbox One generation, Japanese games began to experience a resurgence, and by the time Nintendo launched the Switch, many major developers were ready to get back into the game. Sega re-emerged with a renewed focus on Sonic, but also with some of the greatest JRPGs of the last 20 years, with the Yakuza series becoming more popular than ever.

Square Enix saw a return to form with Dragon Quest XI and Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Capcom revitalized both Monster Hunter and Resident Evil. Meanwhile, From Software emerged as a major player with the Dark Souls series, which spawned a new genre that was more focused on gameplay than narrative.

However, while Japanese and indie games were on the rise, AAA gaming was running into major problems. Games were taking longer and longer to make and becoming increasingly expensive to produce. To balance out rising game costs, many companies began to lean into season passes and the “games as a service” model.

Publishers wanted to squeeze as much as possible out of the games they released, and that led to many companies releasing projects that were lacking in content. Features that should have been a part of games from the beginning were sold to gamers at a later date, and while that behavior might have been popular, it also sparked backlash from fans. By the end of the 2010s, gamers had become far more cynical when it came to blockbuster AAA titles.

AAA Gaming Can’t Keep Up With Changes In The Industry

The gaming landscape has continued to change in the 2020s, and AAA gaming has been forced to change along with it. Thanks to the rise in digital gaming, gamers are exposed to a wider variety of titles than ever before, and some indie titles are getting as much time in the spotlight as big blockbusters.

In 2025, gaming’s biggest success stories were all titles releasing at budget prices, from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at $50 to Arc Raiders at $40. Even the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong was priced at only $20. Gaming is becoming increasingly expensive, and because of that, affordable titles are becoming much more appealing.

Competition outside the West has only increased, even at the blockbuster level. Not only has Japan bounced back, but developers in other regions are also making a splash. Genshin Impact, one of the most successful gacha games ever, comes from Chinese developer miHoYo. South Korea produced games like Lies of P and Stellar Blade, and another South Korean game, Crimson Desert, is one of the most anticipated games of 2026.

Even Twitch’s success has changed the way people view video games. The most popular games on Twitch are rarely major AAA titles and are instead titles like Among Us or, more recently, games like Schedule I and PEAK. Minecraft is a streaming favorite and the best-selling game of all time, even though it has blocky graphics. Audiences no longer prioritize graphical fidelity like they used to.

The increasing development times and costs of blockbuster AAA titles mean there are fewer releases each year, with even massive publishers like EA and Ubisoft only coming out with a handful of titles. Some studios, like Warner Bros., can go entire years without releasing a game at all. Studios seem to be canceling every title that doesn’t look like it’ll be a mega-hit, which leaves AAA developers with even less in the pipeline.

While AAA blockbusters haven’t disappeared, there are far fewer AAA titles than there used to be, even though more games are coming out than ever before. It seems like AAA games are losing relevance, and other, smaller titles are stepping in to take their place.

Of course, AAA gaming is far from dead. Battlefield 6 was the highest-selling game in America in 2025, and Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to dominate the sales charts and the conversation when it finally releases. It could easily snag 2026’s Game of the Year if it actually comes out in time.

Still, it’s clear that the days of the West and AAA games dominating the Game of the Year conversation are over. 2025’s Game of the Year nominees prove that all kinds of titles can dominate the conversation, whether they’re indies or AA releases. It’s a troubling sign for AAA games, but this shift might be good for gaming in the long run.