A series of missteps put Microsoft in second place before the Xbox One even came out. With the launch of the Xbox Series X and S, though, Microsoft is in a great position to compete. Both are well-priced, well-specced consoles with a huge library of games spanning two decades. Microsoft's console strategy is unique. Someone with a 7-year old Xbox One has access to an almost-identical library of games as the owner of a brand-new Xbox Series X.

Gaming never went out of style, but in 2020, it evolved from a fun hobby into an essential lifeline. Staying sane isn't easy when you're stuck in isolation for months on end. You can only watch so much Netflix before your brain starts dripping out of your ears. Games provide more active experiences that can help you forget that you've been staring at the same walls for weeks, letting you explore far-away virtual worlds or hang out with friends in multiplayer lobbies. In 2020, gaming became vital.

While some forms of entertainment like movies and sports were hit hard by the pandemic, gaming actually thrived in 2020. Since we were all stuck indoors, we spent a lot more time in front of screens, discovering new experiences, replaying older classics and a few of us even made a dent in our backlogs, aka the "pile of shame." To that end, the Engadget staff presents a slightly different list of our favorite games of 2020: not just the most impactful titles that came out this year, but also the older games that kept us company during this crazy time. I have already spilled so much digital ink on this game this year that, had you asked me to pick my best of 2020 a month ago, I would have picked something different like Miles Morales or Fall Guys. Animal Crossing is fun, I thought, but I've done everything I want to do in the game and I really should be focusing my critical eye on the fancier, flashier titles from more powerful systems. But then the winter update arrived, bringing with it new holidays and reactions and hairstyles, oh my!

There is no way to speak definitively about what is likely to astonish in the days to come, and so one must fall back on intuition or educated guesses. In the search for shortcuts, pedigree is an easy metric on which to rely; it's the principle that informs the following selections of the most anticipated video-game titles of the coming year. Each of the development teams behind a game on this list is responsible for a previous widely acclaimed tile. No one here is an underdog. In 2013, the cultural marketplace was saturated with post-apocalyptic zombie narratives.

Ori and The Blind Forest An adventure game from Indie developer Metroidvania Ori and The Blind Forest won the BAFTA awards for artistic achievement. In a world of pure hand-drawn artistic wonder, you play a heroic young orphan battling against fate to save his home. Everything from the storyline to the visuals is purely grasping, and if you want a low-budget indie game that will totally flabbergast you, this is it. Stellaris A 4X grand-strategy game from Paradox Development Studios, Stellaris is already shaking the internet, with forums and websites abuzz with cheats, walkthroughs and rather useful trainers. While not as massive or exploration-focused as No Man's Sky, there is still an entire galaxy to explore, and much more to do than just travelling planet to planet.