Who won 2025? Ask twelve outlets, a bunch of readers and at least one advent calendar and you'll get a dozen different answers — and a few common themes.
This year's end-of-year coverage reads less like ritual and more like a debate club. Outlets from NPR to GamesRadar+ published curated staff lists, community-driven features like Eurogamer's readers' top 50 opened voting to the public, and longtime fixtures such as Rock Paper Shotgun ran their beloved Advent Calendar, revealing picks day by day. Each list has its own rules, its own palate and, frankly, its own mood. But when you step back, a few clear storylines emerge.
Indies in the sun
A striking through-line across critics' lists: 2025 felt like an indie renaissance. NPR's staff singled out breakout teams and smaller studios — titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Blue Prince showed that fresh ideas and tight design can outshine bigger marketing budgets. Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong continued the trend of sequels that refine rather than bloat; their presence on many lists underlined how well-crafted design and clear vision still matter.
Indie success wasn't just critical; it changed the conversations about what “big” means. When a compact, clever game collects GOTY votes, it drags the rest of the industry into a more creative, risk-friendly orbit.
AAA still matters — but differently
Big studios did not go home empty-handed. Nintendo's Switch 2 launch reshaped platform conversations and gave commercial heft to titles like Mario Kart World and Nintendo exclusives that landed across year-end lists. The console's momentum even showed up in coverage about sales and forecast optimism, a reminder that hardware transitions still tilt the playing field in important ways. Recent reporting on the system's commercial performance highlights that momentum and the ripple effects for third-party planning.
Meanwhile, cinematic heavyweights — think Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yōtei — provided the sorts of sprawling, auteur-driven experiences that critics still love to argue over. They don't dominate every list, but they anchor discussions about ambition and scope.
Community vs. critics: different appetites
Eurogamer invited readers to rank their top five games of the year, opening the door to fan picks and hot takes. That kind of polling often surfaces multiplayer sensations and franchise entries that critics sometimes overlook. It's a useful counterpoint to curated staff lists: the community tends to reward social, replayable and nostalgia-tinged experiences. If you want the pulse of the player base, polls and reader-submitted top 50s tell you what people are actually playing and recommending to friends.
Conversely, features like GamesRadar+'s Year in Review stitched together editor deliberations and deeper retrospectives, aiming to cover the year's breadth from RPG renaissances to hardware and media coverage. Rock Paper Shotgun's advent calendar took a slower-burn approach, revealing favorites daily and giving voice to individual writers' personal hot takes rather than trying to force consensus.
Notable titles that kept popping up
Certain names recur across the year: Clair Obscur, Blue Prince, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Metroid Prime 4 (whose late trailers reignited chatter and play expectations), Mario Kart World, Pokémon Legends: Z‑A, Arc Raiders and Elden Ring: Nightreign. Some of those are indie darlings; some are big-budget staples. That mix is precisely what made 2025 feel alive: surprises in small packages and high-profile launches that still found room to be interesting.
If you follow release windows, you also noticed DLC and expansions continuing to shift visibility. Pokémon Legends: Z‑A's Mega Dimension expansion changed the game's conversation when it arrived, proving that post-launch content can nudge a title back into best-of lists even late in the year. Read more about the expansion's impact and what it adds in its rollout notes.
Why these lists matter beyond awards
End-of-year lists do a few things at once: they canonize, they market and they map trends. For studios, a spot on a dozen lists can extend a game's tail, bring new players in and even influence future patches or DLC. For readers, lists are discovery engines — and for the industry, they're data points about what design choices resonated in a turbulent year.
This was also a year when platform shifts mattered. The Switch 2's entrance not only refreshed Nintendo-owned brands but also altered third-party strategies and audience attention. Coverage of that hardware momentum explains why some Switch-first titles kept percolating in lists and conversation.
A final note about taste
There's no single authority at this moment of gaming culture. Critics, players, family-focused reviewers and festival-style Advent calendars each filter 2025 differently — sometimes in complementary ways, sometimes in outright disagreement. If you're trying to build your own "best of" list, the healthy approach is to read across formats: staff picks for editor expertise, readers' votes for grassroots popularity, and curated daily reveals for eclectic discoveries.
If you're feeling indecisive, use the lists as an outline rather than a map. Try a short indie that critics loved, grab a multiplayer hit your friends raved about, and if you're curious about hardware momentum, keep an eye on how Switch 2 trends shape next year's releases. And if a trailer made you giddy — like the recent Metroid Prime 4 tease — that's a perfectly fine way to choose your next play session.
Want to catch up on a few of the pieces that shaped these conversations? See how the Metroid Prime 4 trailer rekindled hype, check reporting on Nintendo's Switch 2 sales momentum, or read about Pokémon Legends' Mega Dimension expansion to see how DLC kept titles in the mix. For multiplayer launches that divided opinions this year, Arc Raiders' debut provoked plenty of discussion among players and press alike.