Best Time To Release Game of The Year
Which months rise above the rest when it comes to GOTY? To figure it out, we are going to take a look at The Game Awards, which feature a voting process from the top outlets and Spike Game Awards, which were The Game Awards before Keighly fully took over. Both of these events feature a general consensus of the industry for what is considered best in class.
18 Years To Life
For the most part, I can agree with the GOTY or at least understand where the majority of people are coming from except for 2003, when Spike awarded Madden 2004 as the best game when games like Vice City, Wind Waker and Splinter Cell also came out. What happened?
2004 - San Andreas (October)
2005 - RE4 (January)
2006 - Oblivion (March)
2007 - Bioshock (August)
2008 - GTA 4 (April)
2009 - Uncharted 2 (October)
2010 - RDR (May)
2011 - Skyrim (November)
2013 - Walking Dead (April)
2014 - Dragon Age: Inquisition (November)
2015 - Witcher 3 (May)
2016 - Overwatch (May)
2017 - BOTW (March)
2018 - God of War (April)
2019 - Sekiro (March)
2020 - TLOU 2 (June)
2021 - It Takes Two (March)
2022 - Elden Ring (February)
2023 - Baldur’s Gate 3 (August 1.0)
2024 - Astro Bot (September)
2025 - Expedition 33 (April)
21 Awards
0 - July, December
1 - January, February, June, Septemeber
2 - October, November, August
3 - May
4 - March, April
Dating back to 2004, there were 21 awards and zero GOTY released in July or December. 1 released in January, February, June and September. Two released in August, October and November. Three released in May and finally, four were released in March and April.
Breaking It Down
The results actually surprised me a little bit. Things that weren’t surprising included no GOTY from December as most of the ballots have been cast by then, minimal December releases and in the case the game is amazing, it’s unlikely that it’s still on peoples minds a year later.
First off, I was not expecting March and April to be the most common released period for GOTY. Secondly, I was also not expecting for the first half of the year to dominate as much as it did. 72% of GOTY, dating all the way back to 2004 were released in the first half of the year.
