2004 saw many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Madden NFL 2005, NBA Live 2005, ESPN NBA 2K5, Tony Hawk's Underground 2, WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw, Doom 3, Dragon Quest VIII, Gran Turismo 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Myst IV: Revelation, Ninja Gaiden, Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen/Emerald, Everybody's Golf 4 (Hot Shots Golf Fore!), Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Tekken 5, and World of Warcraft. New intellectual properties included Fable, Far Cry, FlatOut, Killzone, Katamari Damacy, Monster Hunter, N, Red Dead Revolver, SingStar, and Sacred. The Nintendo DS was also launched that year.

The year has been retrospectively considered one of the best and most important in video game history due to the release of numerous critically acclaimed, commercially successful and influential titles across all platforms and genres at the time.^[1] The year's best-selling video game was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The year's most critically acclaimed titles were Dragon Quest VIII and Gran Turismo 4 in Japan, and Half-Life 2 and San Andreas in the West.

• January 20 – Wired's Vaporware Awards gives its first "Lifetime Achievement Award" to recurring winner Duke Nukem Forever.
• February 26 – Castle Wolfenstein creator Silas Warner dies at age 54.
• March 4 – Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Peter Molyneux into the AIAS Hall of Fame.
• March 22–26 – Game Developers Conference hosts 4th annual Game Developers Choice Awards and Gama Network's 6th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF).
• May 11 – Nintendo officially announces its "Revolution" (later named Wii) console.
• May 11–13 – The 10th annual E3 is held in Los Angeles, California, United States.^[2]
• July – IEMA (Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association) hosts 5th annual Executive Summit.
• August 1 – During the Evolution Championship Series, a match of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike results in the viral "Evo Moment 37".
• August 3 – Doom 3 is released, restarting the breakthrough franchise, and featured complex graphics features such as unified lighting and shadowing, real-time fully dynamic per-pixel lighting and stencil shadowing. The game became id's best selling game to date.
• October 6-10 – The 2004 World Cyber Games are held in San Francisco.
• October 12 – EA Sports launches the multi-format FIFA Football 2005. It is the last major title to be released for the original PlayStation console.
• November – Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 are officially released on PC around the world, bringing in a new era for the first-person shooter genre of video games, with advanced graphics & physics.
• November 5 – Nobuo Uematsu resigns from Square Enix and becomes a freelancer, starting his own business, called Smile Please Co., Ltd.

In 2004, the total U.S. sales of video game hardware, software and accessories was $9.9 billion compared with $10 billion in 2003. Total software sales rose 8 percent over the previous year to $6.2 billion. Additionally, sales of portable software titles exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Hardware sales were down 27 percent for the year due in part to shortages during the holiday season and price reductions from all systems.

• 2004 in games