I was thinking over releases this year and I don't know that I can recall many that were this dense with significant games such as:

Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom
Diablo 4
Street Fighter 6
Mortal Kombat 1
Final Fantasy 16
Baldur's Gate 3
Starfield
Hogwarts Legacy
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Resident Evil 4
Marvel's Spiderman 2

And plenty of lower profile titles like:

Pikmin 4, Jagged Alliance 3, Age of Wonders 4, Honkai: Star Rail, Hi-Fi Rush, Fire Emblem Engage, Deadspace, Sea of Stars, Trails into Reverie, Darkest Dungeon 2, Armored Core 6, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Sonic Superstars, Super Mario Bros Wonder, Super Mario RPG, Rogue Trader, etc.

I'm not sure what makes those more "significant" than any year's lineup of titles.

All I see is sequels and francise products. Some new concepts and ideas would be welcome.

I think a lot of that is going to be highly subjective. I wouldn't call a single player game that "requires a constant internet connection for all game modes" and is monetized up to the eyeballs (Diablo 4) as 'exceptional' in any year. I remember being far more excited over games like Diablo 2 and even Torchlight 1-2 than 'online services' like Diablo 3-4. Hogwarts Legacy (Denuvo aside), was / is woefully unoptimised "needing" 12GB VRAM GPU just for 1600x900 resolutions (and still plagued with widespread complaints of stuttering even on +$800 GPU's). Many more games released over the past 12 months (Forspoken, Dead Space, Callisto Protocol, etc) run like crap without the visuals justifying the huge jump in GPU requirements just for 60fps 1% lows.

Looking back there's definitely been better years (eg, 2014 = Alien Isolation, Banished, Betrayer, Divinity Original Sin, Styx Master of Shadows, The Talos Principle, Vanishing of Ethan Carter, etc) where the games were not only good, the PC versions were both well optimised and free of pay2win / online service junk. And there were multiple years in the 90s / 2000s where it was literally impossible to keep up with hit after hit and half the releases ended up being played as older games years later.

OK. But it is very significant in terms of its genre, sales, and media coverage. Nobody would skip covering Diablo 4 but they might skip covering say Trine 5 even though it is an OK game.

I think you're not viewing things in terms of the larger player base. The games you are mentioning are small titles that don't sell that well comparatively. You also seem to be locked into a PC only bubble.

And I mean Styx? Betrayer? Horribly reviewed. If you actually think those were the top games of 2014 I think you have a minority view.

Yeah... and there are games like that every year. That's how it works. At least it sold well enough to get a sequel on its own merits rather than because of morons arguing on social media or morons buying microtransactions.

I don't even know what that means. People either pay for the game to be profitable or they don't.
The point though is that Diablo 4 was a major release regardless of if you personally like it.

I mean Trails into Reverie is probably what I liked best but I realize it's small potatoes compared to Diablo 4.

Yes. And there are major releases every year. There's nothing special about Diablo 4. At least no in a good way.

I don't remember many years with this many major releases though. I mean BG3 and Starfield and FF and Diablo and Street Fighter, etc all in the same year?

Exceptional and significant? Perhaps in title only...

Problem with modern game development is that most developers are far too greedy and/or too concerned with pleasing everyone, which ultimately leads to a bland, uninspiring game with little to no progress or new ideas. Only indie devs seems to really take a chance on taking it further and actually create a good written game with good story and characters.

Diablo 4 was already mentioned when it comes to mt's, and Starfield is just a love-child of Fallout4 and NMS without any personality or joy (and 10-15 years old already, technically at least).

As far as I'm concerned, the only winners here might be Larian for not caving to the minority (includes external "forces" like social media activists and shareholders).

And yes, many games are just rushed, buggy, and unoptimized mess.

Well this is a PC-centric website. Likewise, I view exceptional games as being more than just sales figures. Taking that metric to an extreme, 2017 was the most ultimate year ever for gaming solely because of Fortnite which has an "exceptional" player base of 350 million players that dwarfs every sale of every game on yours & my lists combined. Is it really an "exceptional" game though? Not really. It didn't even invent the "Battle Royale" genre. It's exceptionally popular mostly because school kids see the $0 price tag, then see their friends playing and want to 'fit in'...

Man you guys are all doom and gloom all the time :)

On the contrary - we saw a bright future for indie developers a long time ago. ;)

OK then you can cheer the great indie success of BG3 in 2023 then.

Just my personal oppinion:

Most of those games are run-of-the-mill AAA titles I'd say, nothing special about them, they are as streamlined and predictable as they get.
I don't see how games like Starfield are noteworthy. It's just yet another overhyped and buggy sandbox game made by Bethesda. The Metacritic user score is sitting at 6,6 right now.

Almost no game in that list deviates from its predecessors, its just dull sequels that have maybe added a handful of new mechanics or interesting characters, if even that.
To me personally 2023 has been a disappointment so far, gaming-wise.
But to each their own I guess. At least, there's been a few exceptions like BG3, but I wouldn't say it's been my game of the year.

Sorry for the rant.
At least there's been a couple great indie games this year, like Showgunners and Turbo Overkill. Plus, Slay the Princess is going to release later this year :)