It'd be interesting to see the number of 94+ per year since it is the biggest, most acclaimed games which define a year usually. 2023 w/o Zelda TotK and BG3, for instance, goes from an incredible year down to a solid year imo.

Quantity <<< Quality. Ppl don't have time to play many games.

Most people have time to play more than 1 - 3 games per year... especially people who visit this forum.

And some years don't have any games with a MetaScore of 94+ ... do you just stop playing any games these years?

(responding to the comment above me.) I sunk 5 months into Zelda TotK last year. Only played a total of like seven games that entire year. This year, I played a whole lotta retro b/c there wasn’t as consistent a stream of quality releases, and I imagine I’m not the only one either. (I posted my entire log of games I played this year in the “Games Played This Year” thread. SMGalaxy, Banjo Kazooie, SMBros3, TLoU:Pt2, and Paper Mario TTYD were games I played for the first time this year, in place of new releases.

dupe

dupe

I added some data to show the beauty of backwards compatibility (the colored lines).

A huge library of good/great compatible games from the previous generation(s) helps new hardware a lot (especially in its first years).