2023 has been an incredibly busy year for both video game developers and gamers everywhere. For a year that saw the release ofย Baldur’s Gate 3, Spider-Man 2,ย andย Starfield, there were a lot of big names all jockeying for the title of “favorite.” And while theย Game Awardsย has definitively named this year’s Game of the Year, the question of which game was the world’s favorite still remains unanswered. If you were to ask Google which game was most popular, they’d show you their list of the most-searched video games of 2023 – and it’s got some surprising results.
Google Releases the Most-Searched Games of 2023
As part of its “Year in Search” function, Google has just released a list of the most-searched games of 2023. The list, which was gathered from an international audience, has some surprising entries, and some that aren’t too surprising at all:
- Hogwarts Legacy
- The Last of Us
- Connections
- Battlegrounds Mobile India
- Starfield
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- ในใคใซ ใฒใผใ
- Diablo IV
- Atomic Heart
- Sons of the Forest
Some audiences may be surprised to seeย Hogwarts Legacyย sitting in the number one spot, especially since it wasn’t nominated for anything at the Game Awards last week. Still, nominations or not, it was a meteoric hit when it released back in February.ย Sukia Game,ย ranking seventh, is aย Nintendo Switchย puzzle game that’s relatively unknown to Western audiences but became a streaming hit not long after its release earlier this year.
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Best Console Exclusive of 2023Titles like The Last of Us and Starfield are far more expected on a list like this: after all, one of them got a TV show adaptation this year, and the other was Bethesda’s first original release in an incredibly long time. It’s also not surprising that Baldur’s Gate 3 made Google’s most-searched games list, given that it won 2023’s Game of the Year Award despite coming out in August, relatively late in the year. The Larian Studios game was also the first entry in the Baldur’s Gate game series for over twenty years, and it breathed new life into a series most people thought was deader than Withers.
Overall, Google’s list provides a good sampling of 2023’s biggest hits in gaming. While games like Spider-Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. Wonder didn’t make the cut, it’s interesting to see which gaming trends carry onto a global scale.
