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)

18 Awards

0 - July, September, December

1 - January, February, August, June

2 - October, November

3 - April, May,

4 - March

Dating back to 2004, there are 18 awards. zero GOTY released in July, September and December. 1 released in January, February, June and August. Two released in October and November. Three released in April and May. Finally, four were released in March.

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 to be the most common released month 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.

When looking at the projected GOTY for 2023, front runner, Tears of the Kingdom is releasing in May which is the second highest month. As for March, the highest month, this year we have RE4 Remake and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor both coming out and coincendally Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and RE2 Remake were my two top games from 2019. Add those titles to games like Starfield, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Street Fighter 6, Silksong and Diablo 4 all slated for the first half of 2023, it looks like history has a good chance of repeating itself.