2013 Predictions

2013 is here and many people are attempting to predict what the year will hold for us gamers. That sounds like a good idea so I will do the same. Just for fun, some of my predictions will be serious while others will be in jest. See if you can spot which is which!

1. Microsoft will show the Next Xbox at E3 and will be released in November of this year.
2. Sony will show the PlayStation 4 at E3 and will not be released it until holiday of 2014.
3. The Behemoth’s new game, Battle Block Theatre, is finally released.
4. THQ goes completely under and all of their assets are sold.
5. Warner Bros buys Vigil Games and announces Darksiders III.
6. The Wii U’s library comprises mostly of ports of games and struggles with lower than expected sales.
7. The Nintendo eShop will continue to release inventive titles for both the Wii U and 3DS.
8. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 will be released but will fail to surpass the sales record Black Ops 2 set. It will still make a little over 400 million dollars at launch.
9. After the lukewarm reception to Assassin’s Creed Revelations and III, there will be no Assassin’s Creed title this year.
10. Electronic Arts will give up on the NBA Live / Elite series and instead will release a new NBA Jam or Street title.
11. Electronic Arts will release Battlefield: Bad Company 3 this year and will give the option to purchase only the multiplayer online for $20.
12. Remember Me will be a surprise hit for Capcom but will receive some questionable DLC.
13. There will be no word on Tekken X Street Fighter.
14. Konami will finally announce a new Contra game…as a downloadable title.
15. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will struggle to find an audience and go free to play.
16. Downloadable titles will grow in popularity and will more or less be just as prevalent as retail games.
17. Dead Space 3, The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite will all disappoint critically.
18. Sega will continue to release retro releases and will gain back some financial ground.
19. Capcom will release a Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 2 collection and announce a HD remake of the third game.
20. Sony will stop supporting the PlayStation Move.

What are your predictions? Leave a comment and let me know!

2013 is here and many people are attempting to predict what the year will hold for us gamers. That sounds like a good idea so I will do the same. Just for fun, some of my predictions will be serious while others will be in jest. See if you can spot which is which!

1. Microsoft will show the Next Xbox at E3 and will be released in November of this year.
2. Sony will show the PlayStation 4 at E3 and will not be released it until holiday of 2014.
3. The Behemoth’s new game, Battle Block Theatre, is finally released.
4. THQ goes completely under and all of their assets are sold.
5. Warner Bros buys Vigil Games and announces Darksiders III.
6. The Wii U’s library comprises mostly of ports of games and struggles with lower than expected sales.
7. The Nintendo eShop will continue to release inventive titles for both the Wii U and 3DS.
8. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 will be released but will fail to surpass the sales record Black Ops 2 set. It will still make a little over 400 million dollars at launch.
9. After the lukewarm reception to Assassin’s Creed Revelations and III, there will be no Assassin’s Creed title this year.
10. Electronic Arts will give up on the NBA Live / Elite series and instead will release a new NBA Jam or Street title.
11. Electronic Arts will release Battlefield: Bad Company 3 this year and will give the option to purchase only the multiplayer online for $20.
12. Remember Me will be a surprise hit for Capcom but will receive some questionable DLC.
13. There will be no word on Tekken X Street Fighter.
14. Konami will finally announce a new Contra game…as a downloadable title.
15. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will struggle to find an audience and go free to play.
16. Downloadable titles will grow in popularity and will more or less be just as prevalent as retail games.
17. Dead Space 3, The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite will all disappoint critically.
18. Sega will continue to release retro releases and will gain back some financial ground.
19. Capcom will release a Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 2 collection and announce a HD remake of the third game.
20. Sony will stop supporting the PlayStation Move.

What are your predictions? Leave a comment and let me know!

1. I will drink beer again while playing video games.

2. Still sleep with the same woman ( again )

3. Will win my bet in the coin toss at the Super Bowl

4. I still will not endorse any Nintendo products.

5. I will still get annoyed by buying on disc DLC.

6. Bioshock Infinte will be GOTY.

7. Lindsay Lohan will have a wardrobe malfunction

8. My Philadelphia Eagle will still SUCK

9. Mike Vick gets chased out of Philly by a rabid mob

10. Phillies win the World Series. Cole Hamels wins his 1st Cy Young.

@Colorwind said:

1. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 will be released but will fail to surpass the sales record Black Ops 2 set. It will still make a little over 400 million dollars at launch.

I want this to happen just so an American developer will hold the prize seat for most obtuse game title organization. Final Fantasy's spinoff nonsense would pale in comparison to 'CoD 4: Modern Warfare' vs. 'CoD: Modern Warfare 4'.

@Colorwind: I don't have any predictions myself, but I have a few things to say about yours. It's an interesting list, but I think some of them are unrealistic or unfounded:

1 & 2: I find it very hard to believe that Microsoft would announce the NeXtBOX at E3 and then release it just a few months later. I think the window for announcing it for a 2013 release is closed; last chance was Spike VGAs. Do consoles ever get announced at GDC? I can't remember. Anyway, I think both those systems are 2014 at this point.

5: I dunno if Vigil would immediately announce Darksiders III after getting bought. Who can say how far along a new Darksiders game is at this point, or if that's even what they're working on. That said, I have a feeling that Warner Bros. is a good fit for Vigil, but I'd also be interested to see in whether or not Bethesda aggressively pursues former THQ studios to develop themselves as publishers. Volition would be an interesting pick-up for Bethesda.

9: I highly doubt it. Assassin's Creed is an annual franchise, and continues to be a strong seller. ACIII has sold over 7 million copies, according to Ubisoft.

10: It's possible to let nostalgia and critical acclaim inflate expectations, especially when applied to large publishers. EA experimented with bringing back NBA Jam on the Wii and XBLA and they hardly set the world on fire (no pun intended).

11: I have heard absolutely nothing to suggest that a new Bad Company game is in development. It's more likely that there'll be a Battlefield 4 before a Bad Company 3. Might even see Mirror's Edge 2 before BC3. BC2 was basically a slightly smaller Battlefield game anyway, except it had a decent campaign with some personality.

13: Man, I forgot that they had even talked about making a Tekken x Street Fighter.

15. Saying that an MMO will underachieve and go F2P is hardly a bold prediction in this day and age. Subscription MMOs are pretty much dead aside from WoW.

16. I think there is an overestimation here. Sure, the online component of games consoles has risen in prominence with the rise of console multiplayer and the console's functionality as media players, but plenty of people are still tied to physical media and there are a lot of 360s in the world that aren't even connected to the internet. You might start seeing ads for downloadable games in mainstream media - The Walking Dead series two might get a TV commercial - but we are a ways off from downloadable games being on par with retail games as regards sales. If you're talking critically, then this has already happened.

17. Screw you, BioShock Infinite will be amazing. In Levine We Trust.

18. I don't think re-releasing old games on digital platforms can keep any publisher afloat, especially not Sega. They've been putting out a steady stream of classics on download services in recent years, and they're still in a terrible financial position. The Sega Mega Drive was my first console, and so it pains me to say it, but Sega is only going to decline in relevance and prosperity in 2013.

Didn't 4 basically happen yesterday?

Also, I'm with you on no Assassin's Creed game this year. It could happen, but I doubt it.

@Marcsman said:

6. Bioshock Infinte will be GOTY.

I can get behind that.

@Atlas: 1&2. I agree that it seems too soon to announce and release a new console this year but I think Microsoft is crazy enough to do that. Sony however isn't.

5. I meant that Warner Bros would announce that Vigil is making Darksiders III. Vigil probably only has a few ideas but Warner Bros will announce the title to show shareholders the fruits of their purchase. Oh and Volition would be a good fit for Bethesda.

9. This is one of the predictions I said would be in jest.

10. NBA Jam still did better than NBA Live in that NBA Jam/Street exists where Live/Elite doesn't. EA loves their sports titles and they must hate that there's a whole sport they have no hand in.

11. This is another one of my predictions I said would be in jest.

15. I never said all the predictions will be bold.

16. I'm talking about a combination of critically and financially. I disagree and think it will happen. I know there are those who rely on physical media but that margin is shrinking.

17. The development has been rocky. I never said Dead Space 3, The Last of Us or BioShock Infinite will be bad games. They just won't be 9 out of 10s that everyone hopes they'll be. Don't take it personally.

18. Their re-releases has helped so far and I think it will continue to do so. The reason is because Sega isn't releasing a lot of retail games. The ones they have this year (Aliens: Colonial Marines, Total War: Rome II, whatever Sonic game they release) will make them money and because re-releases don't cost that much and they tend to do okay, Sega will see a fair amount of profit.

@Atlas: The Xbox 360 was announced in I want to say May of 2005.

It was released that same November.

@Oldirtybearon said:

@Atlas: The Xbox 360 was announced in I want to say May of 2005.

It was released that same November.

It was also woefully underdeveloped, and rushing it to market meant that they had to deal with Red Ring of Death, which was bad PR and cost them money in replacing consoles. So while there is precedent, I think it's fairly unlikely that they'll make the same mistake twice.

@Colorwind: I'll admit I missed the part in your post that said some predictions were joke ones, so that's my bad. And I wasn't taking BioShock Infinite personally, I just think that it's presumptive to call the development rocky. Sure, people left Irrational before the game came out, but we don't know why. If this was a two-year dev cycle, key personnel leaving the project a year before release would suggest that the project was a disaster. But some amount of work has to have been done on this game consistently since...let's say 2009 or early '10. And the project head is a talismanic and influential developer for a reason; he has an outstanding track record.

You can tell from my username and avatar that I have a huge investment in the franchise - when GB launched I had recently played BioShock and I was absolutely in love with it, and I still think it's a top 5 game of the generation - so I am biased in this matter, but I would honestly be surprised if it's Metacritic score is less than 92; forgive me for using a crude metric.

I have significantly less confidence in Dead Space 3 being a great game, despite my love of the original and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the sequel.

Analysts and writers - Klepek included - have gone on record as saying that Sega is basically moribund as a publisher at this point. Although perhaps that's based more on the assumption that physical games at retail are driving the industry - Binary Domain sold only 20,000 copies in March 2012. Also it's a structural issue; they're stuck in a Japanese model where they are ridiculously overstaffed and have large corporate offices everywhere, so even while the digital sales that are currently driving Sega do turn them a profit, they lose a lot of money on their infrastructure. That's why Sega's net income has halved in the 2012 financial year compared to 2011.

But maybe you're right about digital sales. I've actually found quite a few articles suggesting that digital sales are becoming a bigger force in the industry - Engadget says that Q3 2012 saw $1.4 billion in digital revenue against $1.07 billion for new retail games. I'm the last person in the world to be critical of the digital future, as I almost exclusively buy books on Kindle, albums on iTunes or Amazon MP3, and games on Steam, but I thought that we were still a few years away from the digital future. But maybe, with the Wii U selling launch games as day-one digital releases, as well as what Sony has done with the PSVita, the future truly is now.

@Atlas: I don't think Sega is going to be this amazing success in 2013. All I meant is Sega will have a better year in 2013 than in 2012 for the reasons I gave. I know they are stuck in their ways and that's to their detriment but I also know that they'll have good games this year and because they are focused on the re-releases, which don't cost much, they will have more money this year. The digital market is growing as people are realizing that it's convenient and smaller games can be played with no problem on older computers. By no means is the digital market going to replace the retail market but I do think they'll be on common ground more or less this year.

@Atlas: The real culprit behind the RROD was the restriction of lead based soldering. That forced Microsoft to use plastic instead and the rest is history as they say.

But what does any of this have to do with you being wrong about your assumption that it's "far too late" for a console announcement? The NeXtbox has been in development since the 360's release in one form or another. Or do engineers and designers only work on a console after it's been magically poofed into existence at a trade show?

THQ are already being cut up and sold, that's not really a prediction. I do hope WB pick up Darksiders, but the second one underperformed and THQ didn't have the money to finance another Red Faction, even though making another open world game would have surely been a winner. I doubt another Darksiders is in development, so if the franchise is bought, it'll be a long while before we see another one.

The next Xbox has to come this year though. The 360 has been running out of steam for a long while, they have practically nothing to release this year and it's been evident lately that they're just stalling for time before their new thing hits. I don't think there's even a remote chance it won't come this year.

What I think will happen at E3

Kinectkinectkinectkinectkinect and Reggie saying that everything about the Wii U is fantastic and it will probably cure cancer

@WinterSnowblind: THQ has been saying that they're not going to go under, just sell some of their studios and properties. I think that's a bunch of bull so that's why I made that prediction. Darksiders is the only reason to buy Vigil games so that's why I say Darksiders III. I think Darksiders II did alright if you add the Wii U sales numbers. Red Faction has nothing to do with Vigil Games, that was made by Volition, which @Atlas pointed out would be good with Bethesda, although they will probably make a new Saints Row before a Red Faction.

Nintendo announces it will no longer make consoles after the Wii U's complete and utter failure.

Sony gets out of the handheld business after the Vita's complete and utter failure.

@Oldirtybearon: Well like the OP said, it's just predictions really. But the more I think about it, the more I think I was wrong to assume that Microsoft wouldn't be thinking 2013. I don't know anything that you don't know, I have no inside knowledge. It's just that I had the feeling that Microsoft will have learnt caution from their first attempt to fast-track a console from announcement to release. Maybe the early release wasn't the main reason behind RROD, and to be honest the main reason why sites like GB are so wired into being 360-first despite the PS2's dominance is because the 360 was out first. I am under no assumption that substantial engineering work is done on a console after it's been announced; I would assume that by that stage it's usually making sure it's polished and working out plans for mass manufacture.

It's more of a marketing issue, really, but in recent years we've seen the gap between announcement and release shrink across tech industries, led of course by Apple. To be honest, now I've thought more about it, I think this one could go either way, but based on what I've heard from industry people discussing the new consoles, I've heard nothing to suggest that Microsoft is planning a 2013 release. But maybe they'll surprise us all.

@Colorwind: You're right, Sega's fortunes probably will improve in 2013, but they couldn't exactly be worse. The transition to digital sales probably does spell good news for publishers like Sega, with established back catalogs, but let's not forget that what we're doing here is expecting a Japanese company to be forward-thinking about the digital future. And that's a dangerous assumption, considering how far behind Japanese companies have been for years as regards the internet and its growing influence in the industry.

The article I linked to, to my surprise, seems to imply that in Q3 2012 digital sales were already on par with retail, so I can see that trend continuing in 2013. However, the real test would be to see how digital compares to retail during Q4, when retail sales are at their height and the biggest games are launching. The Wii U isn't a good test case, as although it has day-one digital sales it's a console that is bought more by more casual gamers and kids, and it's the enthusiast fanbase that's driving digital sales - not to say that Nintendo doesn't have hardcore fans, it's just a generalisation. Same applies to iOS, which I have to assume makes up a large portion of those digital sales. Steam and the PC isn't a good case either, as it has always been a platform tailored to "hardcore" gamers, with the exception of games like The Sims. But if the neXtBox and PS4 see good digital sales at launch, then it'll be the final nail in the coffin of retail.

I don't really have anything more to say on either subject, but I'm glad that this thread allowed me to learn from my false assumptions.

1. I will start more games than I finish.

2. I will try to fix that problem, but it probably won't work.

I predict the "Z" button.

Both the PS4 and the Nextbox will come out this year.

Last of Us will be the game of the year.

Bioshock Infinite will be the disappointment of the year.

Tombraider will be the surprise hit of the year.

Blizzard will reveal their new IP, it will be closer to completion than anyone is expecting.

Valve will reveal a new IP.

EA will lose both lawsuits with Activision re respawn. I am dumb, imagine something else terrible happens to EA in this spot...

Nintendo will reveal a new Metroid game, a game that you would buy a Wii U for, seriously.

Indie games will take a backburner this year (seriously can you even think of one interesting high profile indie game coming out?)

PC Gamer magazine will shutdown this year.

@Kidavenger: I don't think Tomb Raider being good would be a surprise. It would be surprising if the multiplayer is any good but that's about it. Also, the EA/Activision/Respawn lawsuit settled already.

@Colorwind: I think it's going to be a big surprise, like a game of the year contender.

@Atlas: To your first point:

From Wikipedia:

The official unveiling of the Xbox 360 occurred on May 12, 2005,

So announcing a console the same year that you release it isn't without precedent.

EDIT: Nevermind, you have already addressed this.

@Kidavenger said:

Indie games will take a backburner this year (seriously can you even think of one interesting high profile indie game coming out?)

Monaco, Super Time Force and maaaaybe Radio the Universe. Aside from the fact that indie games have a habit of coming out of nowhere.

@planetfunksquad: True, I just see that there has been a steady build up in the quality and quantity of indies over the last 5 years, I think that falls off a bunch this year.

To respond to a few of your predictions:
2. The PS4 will be officially teased next month at an event exclusively for Playstation. 
4. This is already happening.
5. Vigil is working on a new title dubbed Crawler. Speculation is differed on whether it is Darksiders 3 or a new IP.
11. Bad Company 3 will be a fall 2014 game. Battlefield 4 will be this years Battlefield. 

@Kidavenger: Oh, totally, theres gotta be a point where over saturation gets the better of the indie dev scene, and maybe it'll be this year, but I still think theres a lot of great stuff on the horizon. We're at a point where an indie game can't just be "good enough" now. That means that while there might be a quantity drop off, I see a rise in quality as being very probable.

@Turtlebird95: 4. Like I said in a previous comment, THQ is still saying that they will survive after the auction and bankrupcy. I don't believe that.

11. This was one of my predictions that was in jest.