If the 2024 Game of the Year race was defined by a relatively open field with no clear frontrunner, then 2025 couldn’t be any different – or so it seems at first glance. Grand Theft Auto 6which will be released in late 2025, is the juggernaut to beat and will remain so all year long, whether anyone gets to play it in advance or not. 12 years after its predecessor, it is considered brilliant – based on developer Rockstar Games’ stellar track record – and its cultural hegemony is assured.
In fact the biggest threat to GTA6 Winning every GOTY award in 2025 is Rockstar’s ability to complete it on time. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has taken a cautious approach to the release date emphasizes that the game is on schedule to reach its fall mark of 2025. But Rockstar has a long history of delays. GTA5The original 2013 release date was pushed back from spring to September of that year Red Dead Redemption 2 was postponed twice, moving an entire year from late 2017 to October 2018. A slip to 2026 for GTA6 is far from unlikely and would break the competition wide open for Game of the Year 2025.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume Rockstar can break the habit of a lifetime and pull it off Grand Theft Auto 6 on time. Can anything beat it? It would be difficult. But it is certainly not impossible.
Perhaps because Rockstar’s reputation is so gigantic, Rockstar’s appeal is so enormous, and its games are so big and all-encompassing, critics and awards bodies tend to look past them and opt for something with a more focused vision. In 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 lost to Sony God of war reboot, both during The Game Awards and in the majority of individual media awards. That’s despite the fact that the Rockstar game actually has a higher Metacritic rating: 97 to God of war’94.
Red Dead is not GTA, that’s true. But the story wasn’t all that different in 2013, when another Sony game, The last of usswept the critical consensus for Game of the Year at Rockstar’s expense. GTA5 won Game of the Year at Game Awards, forerunner to the VGX awards, but lost to Naughty Dog’s grim opus at virtually every other major awards show, including BAFTA, DICE and Game Developers Choice, and was also soundly defeated in the overview of individual media awards. In 2008, Grand Theft Auto 4 won Game of the Year at the Spike Video Game Awards, but lost to others at other ceremonies Fallout 3 And Super Mario Galaxy. You have to go back to 2004 GTA: San Andreas to find something resembling a GOTY sweep for a Rockstar game.
GTA6is therefore not necessarily invincible. But there is one God of war or a The last of us that could foil it? Let’s take a look at some of the potential competitors.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Wait, a game from 2024? Yes, but due to the December release date, Indy is eligible for the 2025 Game Awards, and an upcoming PlayStation 5 release will give it a second chance to impress. Plus, people really love it. But it still seems like a long way.
Death Stranding 2: On the beach
Hideo Kojima’s bizarre walking opus was somewhat divisive upon its release in 2019, but players keep coming back to it and the sequel has a chance to build on its reputation. Sony is backing it as a timed PS5 exclusive, and no other company has achieved a better GOTY record in recent years.
Speaking of Sony, it has a second credible GOTY contender in the form of Sucker Punch’s sequel Ghost of Tsushimaanother game whose reputation only seems to have grown over time. As an open-world action-adventure, it might suffer in comparison GTA6However.
The original Metroid Prime is considered one of the best games of all time, and this terribly Original developer Retro Studios’ long-awaited comeback could benefit from a widely speculated cross-gen launch on both Switch and Switch 2. Will the Prime But does the formula still feel sufficiently up to date in 2025?
Informed guesswork says there’s a good chance we’ll get a new 3D Mario and/or a new Mario Kart in Switch 2’s launch year. While they’re confident games will be among the top-rated games of the year, Nintendo’s family fare tends to not to compete in Game of the Year – the extended one The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being the notable exception.
The new version of Firaxis’s strategy warhorse will certainly be one of the most played games of the year, and probably one of the best received too. But games in the strategy genre are never eligible for Game of the Year honors. It shouldn’t be true, but it is.
Perhaps the biggest unknown quantity of 2025 – apart from all the games we don’t know about yet, of course – is the reboot of the beloved fantasy series from Forza Horizon developer Playground Games. It’ll be in the conversation… if it’s really good.
Other major releases, such as Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Border countries 4And Monster Hunter Wildsshould not be excluded; and it shouldn’t be Hades 2if it turns out in early access this year. It’s still very, very early, and there’s a lot about the coming year in gaming that we don’t know. But it feels like most of these contenders have one or two weaknesses that would stand in their way GTA6 as seriously as The last of us did his predecessor. As it stands, Rockstar’s most threatening competition remains the deadline.