Borderlands 3 comes out in the Q4, with Battleroyale mode, this is why it got delayed. BR carries the series too, getting comparable playing hours to traditional multiplayer.
PS5 and Xbox 2, the fourth Xbox, are not announced, because the companies don't want the announcements to hurt Christmas sales. Both are thoroughly leaked though, with the announcements semi-openly scheduled for Q1 of the year after.
New Switch version is announced. Its probably a slightly bigger version with better feeling joy-cons. My personal hope, though, is that this is wrong and the new version is actually smaller, with the joy cons themselves still feeling better (shorter, yes, but wider which to me is the real problem with them.)
Microsoft buys or creates between 2 to 5 new studios but unofficially loses part of an old one- with medium sized Rare layoffs due to moving away from SoT. Speaking Rare, Banjo or Conker gets a VR game from a 3rd party or small studio acquisition, no real Rare involvement other than sending over some character sheets.
Death Stranding is not delayed, comes out on PS4 in late summer. Halo Infinite, or whatever its called, not delayed either. Metroid 4 also comes along. Those are your huge exclusives for the year. Secondary games also hit their releases without issue, Crackdown 3, Animal Crossing, Yoshi, LoU2, Ghosts of Tsushima, etc. all come out. Crackdown turns out to be a bit of a mess- buggy and showing cuts from its long development time.
Labo continues to exist. Continues to not get price cuts. More effort put into making the games not suck, though.
Discless Xbox One released, its a bit of dud, just not that much of a market left for it.
/V/ hates Last of Us 2. Kotaku loves it during month of release, then forgets about it.
Sony isn't as gone from E3 as you might think- they have a Nintendo Direct equivalent during the show. 30 to 40 minutes instead of a full hour with no live audience to laugh at the fluteman, shows off Ghosts (if it isn't out yet), DS and perhaps a closing look at a hot new game that looks like it might be (and definitely is) next gen.
EA loses their Belgium lootbox case. It does still worm its way through the EU court system, but the writing is on the wall. Companies choose to write these markets off, publicly, rather than give up on this economic model, but behind the scenes start changing stuff up to make sure their games pass legal muster going forward.
More on that, certain European nations and American states release new legislation related to lootboxes. There's 80+ jurisdictions between the two, plus Canada, Australia, etc. The issue can't stay in the news forever without all of the boxes lining up in a few legal areas.
Rage 2 is, indeed, great. Turns out it is an obviously re-skinned Mad Max 2, with the old JC 2 team behind it. Just throw in a little over the top Rage humor, which Avalanche ends up excelling at, and you have a cult classic.
Anthem does "good enough", ME4 gets delayed though as resources need to be pulled in order to prop up the sagging, massive investment that EA put so much money into.
Bethesda rights the ship on Fallout 76, game maintains a dedicated player-base outside of the public eye but the its reputation is shot for a lot of the general public- they will not get away with this again and their upcoming products get actual scorn from some parts of the press, due to their old engine.
Red Dead Online's revenue generating portions launch, to a general meh. There just isn't much worth buying. Or did this already happen?
E3 is a land of blue balls, multiple companies end their shows with a "one last thing" look at a game that is obviously for PS5/BX2, but can't be stated as such. Oh well, they are all cross-platform with current gen anyway.
Nintendo decks their halls with Metroid Metroid METROID!!! In the same way they have done with Zelda, Mario and Smash the last three times. Its very neat and the game itself is fine, but doesn't set the world on fire or anything.
Here's an out there one... that mainline Pokemon game gets delayed a year. Turns out that HD games are still harder to develop for than non-HD game companies think.
Much to the surprise of everyone, that GoW Pop! game turns out to be good. Not great, but good. Not a sales sensation though it does good enough to get a Fable Pop! announced.
Cyberpunk comes out on time and wins players hearts but loses most GotYs to Death Stranding. Anthem politely mentioned but not in real contention at most places. DS, though a media darling, gets a mixed -almost MGS2-esque- reaction. I believe that the old 4chan leaks about the plot are true, and I do not think it will get anywhere near universal audience embrace.
EA does not release a new Battlefront, Disney has put too much pressure on them to release a proper game at this point, which means the team has to be retooled and the game reworked, meaning a delay. It looks good in its presser, but does not garner good press anyway, having lost so much interest from the previous two under-performers.
I mentioned earlier that EA, among others, internally holds back on lootbox monetization due to legal issues, the main place this is apparent is in their sports games, which pay less attention to "story mode" they have spent the past two years pushing. I also don't think that mode was a real audience pleaser anyway.
A lot of the semi-public Super Nintendo Land stuff gets officially announced, such as the lay out for the California version and the status of the new Florida park. People can drink "Shroom Cola" or "Yoshi Slushies" or some other thing. Oh boy.
Epic Games store does not dethrone Steam.
Multiple presidential candidates, including Trump, say dumb things about games/Gamergate.
Very bad year, financially, for game companies. Bad economic times in general, a surplus of used current gen games to compete with (finally,) a few large under-performers, government reaction against lootboxes hurting monetization, and a general consumer consensus to wait for next gen see some real stock losses. No major bankruptcies though- there are no weak men left in this field. Possible exception? Square.
And one final one... Fortnite is still the most popular game for tweens.