Hogwarts Legacy Tops Gaming Google Searches in 2023

Video games run the gamut from silly toys for babies to life-altering works of art, all of which make up an industry that rakes in billions of dollars a year. Of course, the endlessly consumptive nature of the business can’t help but produce controversy, and 2023 had its share of milestones.

With the year almost behind us, it's hard not to look back at 2023 with conflicted feelings. It was a fantastic year for gamers at home with great tentpole releases from PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo, and some excellent indies, too. For years to come, we will all likely argue that 2023 was one of the best – if not the best – year for games. But it was also a terrible year for the people who make games, with more than 10,000 developers laid off, studios closed, and more. 

Steam has released its annual end-of-year charts, ranking the games that have generated the most cold-hard cash on the digital PC storefront. Frequent chart-toppers this year include the obvious subjects (Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield), as well as the games that silently crushed it (Sons of the Forest, Goose Goose Duck.)

While most of the major gaming companies released player-specific wrap-up stats earlier this month, today Valve decided to share some platform-wide statistics, highlighting the most played Steam games of the year. To avoid divulging specifics, the entries are not ranked individually but by category. The top twelve games are in the platinum section, the next 13 are in the gold section, the next 25 are in the silver section, and the last 50 are in bronze. Within those categories, however, entries are «randomly sorted,» so it's unclear which specific game came out at the top of the heap in any specific category.

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The overall design of the iconic castle in is beautifully crafted and gives players a sense of truly being a part of the Hogwarts experience. This is especially true for common rooms, with each of the four having its own design theme to set it apart and reflect the values of that respective House. Depending on where the player is sorted, they will essentially have that common room as their home away from home at Hogwarts.The common rooms are a place to meet up with other wizarding students, practice spells, and just relax and enjoy a cozy, home-like environment after a long day of school.

The currently available AMD FSR 3 frame generation mods continue to impress, doubling performance in titles such as Alan Wake 2 and Hogwarts Legacy.

Hogwarts Legacy only arrived on Nintendo Switch last month, but the port of one of 2023's biggest games has been stubborn in its price so far. Usually we see these later ports jumping straight into Nintendo Switch deals, but this game survived even Black Friday without a price cut. That all came to a head this weekend, though. 

Hogwarts Legacy could become the first non-Call of Duty or Rockstar game to top USA’s yearly sales charts in 15 years. GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 broke the first-person shooter’s streak in 2013 and 2018 respectively, but other than that, Call of Duty has ranked number one every single year since Wii Play was popular all the way back in 2008.

The new update for Hogwarts Legacy on Nintendo Switch comes with a bewildering amount of bug fixes.

In the video game space, records are something that many people pay attention to because they can often paint a picture of how good someone is doing, how bad they’re doing, or what might come next. For example, there were years when the Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console on the market worldwide because its competition could literally not keep up. Then, when they did, they overtook it within the monthly sales numbers. But for Hogwarts Legacy, it has the potential to break a record in the United States that has been going on for 15 years.