If the 2024 Game of the Year race was defined by a relatively open field with no clear frontrunner, then 2025 could not be more different — or so it seems at first glance. Grand Theft Auto 6, scheduled for release in late 2025, is the juggernaut to beat and will remain so all year, whether anyone gets to play it in advance or not. Arriving 12 years after its predecessor, its brilliance is assumed — based on developer Rockstar Games’ stellar track record — and its cultural hegemony is assured.
In fact, the biggest threat to GTA 6 taking every GOTY prize in 2025 is Rockstar’s ability to finish it in time. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has taken a cautious approach to the release date, and insists the game is on track to hit its fall 2025 marker. But Rockstar has a long history of delays. GTA 5’s original 2013 release date was pushed back from spring to September of that year, while Red Dead Redemption 2 was delayed twice, slipping a full year from late 2017 to October 2018. A slip into 2026 for GTA 6 is far from unlikely, and would bust competition for Game of the Year 2025 wide open.
But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Rockstar can break the habit of a lifetime and finish Grand Theft Auto 6 on time. Can anything beat it? It would be tough. But it’s certainly not impossible.
Perhaps because Rockstar’s reputation is so titanic, its popular appeal is so massive, and its games are so vast and all-encompassing, critics and awards bodies have a tendency to look past them and choose something with a more focused vision. In 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 lost out to Sony’s God of War reboot, both at The Game Awards and in the majority of individual media awards. That’s despite the Rockstar game actually having a higher Metacritic rating — 97 to God of War’s 94.
Red Dead isn’t GTA, it’s true. But the story wasn’t all that different in 2013, when another Sony game, The Last of Us, swept the critical consensus for Game of the Year at Rockstar’s expense. GTA 5 won Game of the Year at Game Awards predecessor the VGX awards, but lost out to Naughty Dog’s grimdark opus at virtually every other major awards ceremony, including BAFTA, DICE, and Game Developers Choice, as well as being soundly beaten in the tally of individual media awards. In 2008, Grand Theft Auto 4 won Game of the Year at the Spike Video Game Awards but lost out at other ceremonies to the likes of Fallout 3 and Super Mario Galaxy. You have to go back to 2004’s GTA: San Andreas to find anything resembling a GOTY sweep for a Rockstar game.
GTA 6, then, is not necessarily invincible. But is there a God of War or a The Last of Us that could foil it? Let’s look at some of the potential competitors.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Wait, a 2024 game? Yes, but due to its December release date, Indy will be eligible for the 2025 Game Awards, and a forthcoming PlayStation 5 release gives it a second chance to make a splash. Plus, people really love it. But it still seems like a long shot.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Hideo Kojima’s bizarre hiking opus was somewhat divisive on 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 a better GOTY record in recent years.
Ghost of Yōtei
Speaking of Sony, it has a second credible GOTY contender in the form of Sucker Punch’s sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, another game whose reputation seems only to have grown over time. As an open-world action-adventure, it might suffer from comparison to GTA 6, however.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
The original Metroid Prime is considered one of the best games of all time, and this very long-awaited comeback from original developer Retro Studios might benefit from a widely speculated cross-gen launch on both Switch and Switch 2. Will the Prime formula still feel sufficiently up to date in 2025, though?
Unannounced Mario games
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 would be sure shots to be among the best-reviewed games of the year, Nintendo’s family fare tends not to compete in Game of the Year — the expansive The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being the notable exception.
Civilization 7
The new iteration of Firaxis’ strategy warhorse will certainly be one of the year’s most-played games, and likely one of the best received, too. But games in the strategy genre are never considered for Game of the Year accolades. It shouldn’t be true, but it is.
Fable
Perhaps 2025’s biggest unknown quantity — 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 will be in the conversation… if it’s actually good.
Other major releases, like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Borderlands 4, and Monster Hunter Wilds, should not be ruled out; nor should Hades 2, if it emerges from early access this year. It’s very, very early days, and there’s much about the year ahead in gaming that we don’t know. But it feels as though most of these contenders have one or two weaknesses that would prevent them challenging GTA 6 as seriously as The Last of Us did its predecessor. As it stands, Rockstar’s most threatening competition remains its deadline.
About Author
