Polygon's 100 Games of 2016: Caveats and Notes

If you've come here, you're probably looking for an explanation as to why a game that interests you is not on our list of 100 games coming out in 2016. What follows may be of some use.

Here's how we put the story together.

There is no single list of "every game coming out in 2016" for us to use as a research resource, though there are many partial lists. For this story, we made use of those lists while also trawling through a year's worth of game news coverage in Polygon. Finally, we contacted game publishers and developers directly seeking confirmation that the games on our list are still scheduled to come out this year while asking for new quotes and new images.

By setting a limit of 100 games, we inevitably exclude some titles. Even at the beginning of the year, with dozens of games to be announced in the coming months, we found significantly more than 100 games.

If a game that interests you is not on our list, there are probably some simple explanations.

First, there are many big games that have been announced but have not been confirmed by the publisher or developer as aiming for a 2016 release. This is not to say they won't come out in 2016, but if the publisher isn't ready to commit, neither are we. These include the following ..

• Dead Island 2
• Detroit
• Dreams
• Fable Legends
• Figure Heads
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake
• For Honor
• Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Gravity Rush 2
• Kingdom Hearts 3
• Master of Orion
• Matterfall
• Ni No Kuni 2
• Rime
• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
• Scalebound
• Sea of Thieves
• Shenmue 3
• Tekken 7
• The Bard's Tale 4
• Titanfall 2
• Wild
• Yakuza Zero

Second, there are some category exclusions. This list only includes PC and console games, so no mobile games or projects that are primarily targeted at the launch of VR machines. We also skipped remakes and, generally speaking, games that are in open beta or Early Access. We also mostly avoided games that have been available in other countries or are being ported from one platform to another. Sports franchises were also skipped.

Third, we made a number of judgments on games to include, and games to not include. This list is not a "best of" so much as a "here's some obvious choices as well as others that signify variety and likely interest." Obviously, different people will have different opinions about these judgments.

Finally, it's entirely possible that we have omitted a game simply because we forgot about it. If so, apologies to the makers of those games, and to our readers.

One last word on delays and such.

If you go back and look at our Games of 2015 preview from last January, you'll be struck by how many of them have failed to appear and are still in development. This is likely to be the case again with some of the games on the 2016 list, and there are some obvious candidates for games that may suffer from a delay. Even as we went to press, we had to take games off the list, due to delay announcements, and add alternatives.

For the purposes of this story we have taken the publishers and developers at their word. So far as we know, the games on this list are currently scheduled to come out in 2016.

Have a great year playing some of these games.