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Predicting 2009

admin — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:28:55 +0000

“Welcome… to the world of tomorrow!!”

Ahem. So, a few things will definitely happen in 2009, like the sun completing another orbit around our planet, Obama being sworn in as President of the US and me writing this post. Well, all of them should happen at least. But what about the other stuff? What about… the unforeseen future??

Let’s make some wild predictions and see how we do, eh?

Before you rush off to the bookies, by the way, these predictions are entirely guesswork on my part. Possibly educated guesswork, but not insider-trading style guesswork. Honest.

Known MMOGs

Champions Online will get released this year… but will still slip, probably to Q4. It’ll attract a solid 250K subscribers at launch. Oh: it won’t release on Xbox 360 at launch, either.

DC Universe Online won’t get released, but will go into some sort of Closed Beta… probably about the same time Champions launches… and will announce a ‘solid’ release date in 2010.

City of Heroes will get a major product announcement. 5th anniversary aproaching? Rival super-MMOs releasing? Hel-lo, sequel.

Guild Wars 2 will finally get some marketing love; think videos, some press demos, at least. But no release date.

Jumpgate: Evolution will debut and attract a nice, solid 85K subscribers. We won’t be able to confirm or deny this though, as Codemasters are releasing it.

(I’ve skipped plenty of other current MMOGs because either I don’t know enough about them to predict anything, or there’s no point. “I predict… World of Warcraft will gain subscribers! OoooOOOOooohh!!”)

Unknown MMOGs

Cryptic’s third, unannounced MMOG will be announced as a quasi-pulp game, set in the 1930s, featuring Indiana Jones style global hijinks and monster battling. Hey, I can dream.

Red 5‘s unannounced MMOG will be announced as a… fantasy game! (Boy, I’m pushing the boat out.)

38 Studios‘ ‘Copernicus’ will also be announced… as a dark fantasy game! (Yeah. I’m playing the short odds.)

NCsoft will finally take the wrapper off the Carbine Studios project.

Blizzard won’t announce anything new. At all. Why bother?

The Games Industry in general

The Wii will end up so far ahead of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in sales terms, industry watchers will stop even mentioning it in sales figures. (They’re practically doing this already.)

Microsoft will drop heavy, unsubtle hints about the next Xbox. But won’t announce it, officially, until 2010.

PlayStation Home will get a major revamp by Q4… but will still be a complete flop.

Activision will announce a Guitar Hero product that’ll have a ‘massively multiplayer’ component. Think: your band versus everyone else’s band in the world. There will be additional fees involved.

No-one in the business of MMOGs will pay much attention to articles like this over at Massively. (Sorry, Massively.)

Me, personally

I’ll end up moving to the US of A.

I’ll make a public announcement about why I’m moving to the US.

I’ll make a public appearance (Oooohh!!) at a US-based gaming show or two.

I’ll keep blogging here, perhaps not as often as in 2008 though.

I’ll keep playing World of Warcraft. I know! I’m sorry!

Right: now start throwing things.