PC Gaming Weekly: The RPG sales surge

I have role-playing games on my mind. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. In my 10-plus years covering videos games, I’ve been a champion of RPGs, regardless of their origins: Dungeons & Dragons, the story-heavy games from Japan, the systems-based games of North America and Europe, and the throwbacks and classics.

Seems like a lot of you have had RPGs on the brain in 2017, too. The NPD market research firm said last week that sales for games like Nier: Automatica, Pyre, and Torment: Tides of Numenera are up 50 percent year-over-year. This is happening despite the disappointment of Mass Effect: Andromeda, which EA said this week will no longer receive support for its single-player story. Of course, let’s be fair and note that NPD is also including Horizon: Zero Dawn as an RPG, a definition some on Reddit disagree with.