New Video Games In 2016: What To Expect In The PS4 And Xbox One’s Third Year

New video games in 2016 could show a remarkable improvement over what we’ve seen. Many developers have attempted to use the new PS4 and Xbox One hardware to their advantage, but it hasn’t been until this past year that they’ve started showing potential.

Big titles like Batman: Arkham Knight and Fallout 4 had their shortcomings, but they are beginning to show us what’s possible on the current generation consoles. Others yet have proven that developers still have much to learn.

The multiplayer-central titles of previous years have shown us a serious flaw in major title decisions. Evolve, Battlefield: Hardline, and Star Wars: Battlefront all failed to live up to the hype while those with single-player campaigns have proven their replay value. Mad Max may not have earned as much as Warner Bros. had hoped, but its strong single-player campaign and emphasis on wandering to get the most out of the game made it a worthy purchase for fans of the films.

Video games in 2016 could be the result of learning from this, giving us a standalone single-player experience instead of attempting to force everybody into war from the start menu. Eventually, the forced multiplayer gets old and replay value dies off.

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate was one such title that dropped its attempt to force multiplayer. Unity tried to pull a “clone war” and give four players control over various versions of Arno, and the game ended up being a role model for everything that could go wrong with the franchise.

Need for Speed could have been a bigger release, but Electronic Arts’ insistence on keeping everybody in an open world multiplayer scenario was only one of many problems with the game. The AI was guilty of “rubber banding” the races, making even the best racers frustrated as they battled to the end against opponents they should have been clearly miles ahead of. Thankfully, EA patched that problem, but it was too little, too late.

New video games in 2016 are going to be scrutinized even more. Developers have had over two years to learn the new hardware and learn from mistakes made by others.

According to Wired, we could be seeing a return to open-world superhero games thanks to Crackdown 3. After it was made apparent that Prototype and Saints Row aren’t getting any more sequels, Microsoft seems to be attempting to fix what they got wrong in the second Crackdown and deliver another solid futuristic Hancock simulator. Other new video games for 2016 include Dark Souls III, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dishonored 2, Firewatch, and several more showing promise.

In fact, there are so many new games coming this year that Sony President Shuhei Yoshida has said it’s “too many,” as previously reported by the Inquisitr. Many of us who bought the PlayStation 4 are thinking it’s about time, but quality could easily be sacrificed for the sake of numbers.

This is a lesson that the video game crash of 1983 taught us. The quality of video games in 2016 shouldn’t fall victim to an increased number of rushed titles.

The Guardian’s 25 most anticipated games of 2016, carefully selected by @hownottodraw and I: https://t.co/Vwx3e2MWLt

— Keith Stuart (@keefstuart) December 30, 2015

The Los Angeles Times pointed out that some new trends may be coming our way. Virtual reality could be changing the fabric of gaming, although it has yet to be seen how effective it will be. The Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s greatest failure since the R.O.B., proved that it can be done very wrong.

As also reported by the Inquisitr, the PlayStation 4 could easily end up being the recipient of 4k resolution via a hardware update. Allegedly, Netflix is already capable of offering 4k streaming, but Sony and Microsoft will need to update their consoles to support it.

Could the new video games in 2016 be made compatible for upscaling if the PS4 and Xbox One are updated for 4k visuals? What are you looking forward to in the coming year on consoles?

[Image via Namco Bandai Games]