April 1st, 2016 is still months away. Games that took > 5 years to develop that cannot even get 10/10 in any one area (sound, graphics, physics, animations, story line, character development, stability, UI, controls, dialogue, RPG choices that matter, fetch/side-quests that are meaningful, etc.) should not really be a contender for GOTY imo.
4.8 / 10 average user reviews. I am not aware of any PC game which has gotten GOTY with scores this horrendous. This may be the most overhyped game of 2015 on AT forums but over at Russian forums and elsewhere, it's one of the biggest disappointments of 2015 given the hype.
Steam has over 125M members and the game sold
just 1.2M providing just less than 1% market penetration. That means most PC gamers didn't find it worthwhile to buy this game day 1, are either pirating it or waiting for months/year(s) to get it when it's fixed and modded because the developer couldn't get the basics right.
Since Steam is a requirement for this title, that's a pretty epic flop for one of the most overhyped games that has legions of fans, much bigger fanbase than The Witcher series. Meanwhile, BO3 is already at nearly 9 million copies and
$550M in revenue and the install-base of consoles is minuscule compared to
>125M Steam gamers and ~330M core PC gamers worldwide.
Performance so atrocious that with graphics well below Crysis / Warhead levels,
the game runs like a turd on a 290X/970 level of hardware, dropping well below 60 fps but it's impossible to explain how such poor performance is even remotely justifiable given the primitive graphics. And no, throwing NV-lighting model on a game that looks like a 2007-2008 title doesn't suddenly make it a 2015 game.
No worries then, Skylake and 980Ti to the rescue,
only to be faced with Core i5 Skylake bottlenecking and 980Ti micro-stuttering (4:40-4:50). All of this would be forgiven if the game had the best graphics of 2015, and was rock solid with no bugs/glitches. And yet, it has a
completely buggy texture cache system that ensures terrible performance on consoles that requires an HDD/SSD upgrade, despite graphics that are nowhere near what the best XB1/PS4 games have to offer.
The only way FO4 gets GOTY over Bloodborne, MGS V, GTA V (PC), TW3, SC2: Legacy of the Void, from anyone is if Bethesda bribes the publication. Let's not even discount some other sleepers like Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, Pillars of Eternity, Ori and the Blind Forest.
GOTY isn't a game that you liked the most in 2015, but a game that accomplishes the most for
its genre, stands out the most against all competition in that area in its genre and is the most well-rounded game from all areas overall -- it sets an example for future games for both its respective genre and otherwise. From that perspective, FO4 isn't even a contender for the top 3 of 2015.
Skyrim sold almost
23M copies to date. However, Fallout 3 was a 2008 game so Bethesda had 7 years to make FO4. Skyrim came out in 2011 or 4 years ago.