Every beginning of the year is time for wild dreams and speculations for the future, but every now and then we are surprised by things we couldn't see coming. With 2015 gone and 2016 looking bright for gaming in general, it's time to remember the things that shocked us the most, that took us by surprise (for good or bad). What are the things that surprised you last year?

My surprises of the year were:

-Konami commiting public hara-kiri and burning everything gaming-wise. Konami has been less and less relevant with time as time went on, but one thing is abandoning AAA developing and other thing exiting the market doing everything in their power to piss off as many people as possible. Why did they do so many things that purposely anger so many people and look like childis and arrogant?

-Sega/Atlus not pushing the Persona series more on the 3DS. With Persona 5 coming in 2016, Persona Q selling rather well for the numbers the IP usually gets, and the finantial problems Sega is in right now, you'd think they would have at least brought Persona games to the 3DS. Ports of the PSP games (Persona 1, 2, 2.2 and 3) would have been cheap to make, quick to develop, and would have surely sold well. Persona 4 Golden is the first game of the series that reaches the million units sold, on a platform smaller than the 3DS. Persona 3 Silver (if 4 is golden, 3 might be silver?) would have done similar numbers on the 3DS. Maybe they do it this year, but they probably don't want to compete with themselves.

-There were a lot of Nintendo games with negative reception. There were a lot of games from Nintendo this year that have really failed to meed critical (and maybe finantial) reception. Codename STEAM became the worst selling Nintendo game on the 3DS (and one of the lowest of Nintendo ever), Chibi-Robot might have killed the IP for a long time, Devil's Third has been a bomba, Mario Tennis Ultra is mediocre has been met as such, and AC amiibo Festival is one of the biggest cash grabs of this gen. I know that Nintendo has released wonderful titles this year, and a company can't turn into gold everything they touch, but Nintendo has set their standars higher than this. Hard to compete with 2013 or 2014 while preparing the next system, I suppose

a ton of companies seemed like they gave no effort this year or just werent thinking at all.

-Konami basically killed themselves after firing Kojima, shelving a ton of highly anticipated games, and losing and form of credibility as a gaming company.

-Nintendo had one of their weakest years ever in terms of game quality. Ultra Smash lacked a lot of features, Amiibo Festival was a snooze fest, Triforce Heroes was limited to THREE players, people lost all faith in metroid, zelda and star fox got delayed, and even mario maker was just a do-it-yourself game.

-Sony is still refusing to listen to fans and has the most ridiculous policies ever on subscriptions and backwards compatibility.

-Valve decided to implement paid mods, yeah they were taken down but it still happened, Steam sales dropped in appeal at least from what ive seen, and last month over 30,000 accounts were leaked.

i get that every company has slip ups, but i dont think its ever been this bad. 2015 was a bust

- Splatoon's sales success.
It seemed to have so much going against it; new IP, not much content at launch, etc.
If you'd told me back in April that it would pass 3 million by the end of 2015, I'd have asked you what you were smoking.

- How unspeakably awful Nintendo's E3 was.

- splatoon sales. i thought this would sell like 400k or so

- TLG, FF7 remake and Shenmue announcements. i thought TLG was as good as dead, and Shenmue and FF7 would never happen. i dont care for these games, but fuck where they surprising.

- Rocket League. this game came out of nowhere and is AMAZING

-Halo huge decline in sales with Halo 5. i didnt expect it to sell like it did honestly

- The Whole Konami/Kojima situation. it was just messed up and Komani's behavior was just insane

- Geof actually having the balls to call out Konami at the game awards.

- Just how amazing TW3 really is. im not a RPG fan, but TW3 was just amazing. it looked great, but i didnt expect it to be THIS GOOD

Splatoon doing very well in sales.

Konami destroying itself from the inside.

Iwata passing away.

Square Enix announcing FF VII remake.

Bunch of Japanese devs announcing some of their titles for Steam.

Undertale in general.

Grey Goo turning out to be a dud.

Every newcomer in ssb. As dlc

Who would of thought of any of them? Noone

I was surprised and saddened by Iwata's passing. I would have liked him to see his future plans through and through and hope for the best. Now, he'll just have see how things go from up above as Kimishima fulfills his final plans and more. RIP Iwata san.

I was actually surprised Last Guardian finally got a showing. Nothing notable in terms of graphical differences between its initial reveal and its latest reveal, but at least the developers were finally able to show the game after what...almost ten years? Hopefully, it will be good, considering how games that are developed for almost a decade don't tend to meet even the modest of expectations.

Seeing FFVII Remake was a big surprise since it sorta came out of nowhere, especially after Square announced a port of the original coming to PS4 at the end of 2014.

Konami's downfall was also surprising, mostly because of how public it was.

Splatoon's success surprised me as all I heard were doubts prior to release. But I guess once people actually played the game, they got invested and it was all she wrote.

Finally, the Smash DLC. The trailers of each new fighter really caught my eye and surprised me one way or another. I mean, I have yet to stop watching reaction videos of various trailers of the new DLC fighters. It amazes me that some of these characters were once pipe dreams (i.e., Ryu, Cloud, and Bayonetta).

- Last Guardian getting mentioned
- Splatoon selling really well
- Triforce Heroes ( a zelda with online I mean come on this would have been treason 10 years ago)

I think this was the most eventful gaming year yet. Maybe not the year with the greatest games (although it's up there) but in terms of gaming news, just wow.