Drucker Was Right: No More New Games In 2025

A few weeks ago, famed Up At Noon writer, and Kid Icarus Uprising translator, Mike Drucker, put out an article explaining why he’s done buying new games.

In it he goes to explain why it doesn’t make any sense for him to do so. That he owns too many games, and he has many that he needs to get back to. It was overall a very good read, that I recommend you check out.

The crux of his argument was that we already own so many games, why do we keep increasing it with new ones instead of playing the one we’ve already spent thousands of dollars on already?

No, really, how many games do you own, on your Switch, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox; just in the last generation alone mind, not counting all the 3DS games you have. Or the one single copy of Final Fantasy XIV for the Xbox One, when you don’t even OWN an Xbox One. 

Last year, I decided to get my life together, in the most meaningless way possible, and catalogued all of my games over every platform to know definitely what I owned, and what kind of time commitment I was looking at to really get through my backlog. 

By and large, this was a TERRIBLE idea. 

Nothing makes me sweat more than thinking about the unimaginable weight of my massive backlog. Over nine hundred and fifty games, across various platforms, with a big mixture of free and paid for offerings. 

That’s roughly nine thousand, six hundred and fifty six hours of raw gaming, and that’s WITHOUT including all the games I claimed through Amazon Prime. The games from Amazon alone added up to three hundred and forty eight. 

I have a job! I have a semblance of a life, there is just no way that it makes sense for me to keep buying new games, when I already have so many to play. 

And yet…

I keep buying new ones. The never ending list of “for later” games keep getting longer and longer, and the way things are going I am unsure if “later” will ever come. 

About a hundred years ago, in 2017 I adopted a “no more physical tat” policy. I wish I could find the original tweet, but twitter, just…doesn’t work any more. In it I believe I said I would stop buying collector’s editions of games, because they were pricey, and often would just collect dust on a mantle somewhere. 

Of course, there were caveats. 

Naturally I had to get the Breath of Wild CE, which never came because Amazon cancelled my preorder a week before the game was supposed to come out. So I dodged a bullet there. 

Bungie, however, did not cancel my preorder for the collector’s edition only; Witch Queen, Lightfall, and the Final Shape. None of them came with the game, I paid an extra hundred dollars for those, of course. Gotta get the super edition that comes with the season pass that lasts a year, naturally. 

Obviously I had to get the Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition CE…and the Xenoblade 2 CE. It’s Xenoblade, don’t look at me like that. Hey, at least I held fast when it came to Xenoblade Chronicles 3. 

I did break on the Fire Emblem Engage CE though, a game I still need to finish…

I think you see where this is going. 

We all have our prices! We can’t be blamed for what we do in a moment of weakness. 

So you will forgive me when I exempt Monster Hunter Wilds from that no new game policy. It’s Monster Hunter! Long running franchise that I happen to love of course I am going to get the new installment.

Then of course there’s Xenoblade Chronicles X in March. Gotta get that. 

I would also like to play Astrobot at some point. It was the game of the year for many last year, and I enjoyed the first one so much I know I will actually play this one!

And we can’t forget about the Switch 2, which I am sure will be announced any day now. Would getting a new console and a few launch games count? Should it? Since I’m the arbiter of the arbitrary, I say no.

BUT AFTER THAT! No more new games. My backlog is immense. It has gotten to the point where I feel like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill. Or Prometheus getting my innards pecked out each dawn because I had the audacity to think the human deserved FUN. 

Look, I know most of us have a game buying hobby, and not a game playing one, but we really have got to stop adding new games to a never ending list of games to play later. If you don’t see yourself playing that game in the next week what exactly are you doing? Much better to wait until you ARE ready. 

I had this same thought with Elden Ring recently, and I had to, three separate times, resist the urge to buy the game at all, because I KNOW I didn’t have time to play it, and won’t for a while. It was a small step, but an important one.

Games have truly gotten to the point where ones even released close to a decade ago are still evergreen. Elden Ring is going to look and play just as good five years from now, as it did three years ago. There is no rush to get these games you missed, because, barring a few exceptions, games aren’t going anywhere. 

So don’t do it. Later will come. Or it won’t. 

In 2025, I am done buying games for later. I am either going to get them, and play them when I do. Or wait and get them when I am good and ready. Perhaps I will finally be able to clear out my backlog, after all the years of buying games “for later.”

If nothing else, I at least won’t have to worry about getting GTAVI, because there is no shot in hell, heaven or earth that game is coming out in 2025. 

Good luck out there. If no one’s told you recently, and even if you don’t believe it yourself, you’re doing great. I believe in you. 

Thanks for reading.