Looking Back At 2008 Predictions

By Joe Haygood | December 31, 2008

At the beginning of 2008 I made a few predictions for the coming year.  Some were crazy, some were serious, and some just made people scratch their heads.  So how did I do when I look back at my predictions?  I would give myself a big fat F, because I missed on quite a bit.  So lets take a look at what I guessed at and what actually happened, and I give a little commentary on my guesses in regards to the actual happenings of the year.

Huxley, will end up being radically different from the product envisioned three years ago, becoming more FPS and far less RPG.  Well, I was sort of right with this one.  The game does look to be more of a straight shooter, but we have seen so little of this title, that I can’t give myself a good or bad grade. C

Duke Nukem Forever comes out December 2008 and is actually good.  Well, we actually saw some game footage this year, but beyond that, no Duke Nukem has been seen on a console or PC at this point in time.  Broussard and company over at 3D Realms swear up and down that 2009 will be the year of Duke, but until then, I am going to shrug my shoulders and move on. D

Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG finally annouced in the summer, after being rumored forever.  Okay, we had John Riccitiello saying it was happening at E3, but the official announcement did not come until a couple of months ago.  I did not really go out on a limb here, as the game was a unspoken truth for many months before my prediction. B+

We start to see Wii overstock by September of 2008 after a lack of good games from third party providers.  Okay, we are seeing more Wii’s in stock this season, but it has nothing to do with a lack of third party games.  Nintendo has stepped up production, but as of this week, they are starting to become scarce again.  D-

Metal Gear Solid 4 announced for the 360 in July at E3.  Well, I fell into the rumor trap with this one, and I got a big fat plate of nothing.  The rumors are still bouncing around, but as of today, we have nothing. F

Little Big Planet will be Game of the Year.  This one is not totally played out yet, but Little Big Planet is a huge critical hit, even though commercially, it is hurting a bit.  Some poorly timed issues with game content and user content hurt it as well.  It will probably lose out to another, more high profile title, but I still put it in my top three games of the year, if that counts for anything. C

Live for Windows finally becomes integrated into the Vista OS by Christmas 2008, and will allow play of XBLA games that are owned on the 360 to be played on the PC, when available.  Well, a standalone client released, but it didn’t do much of anything.  Also, no XBLA games are playable on the PC, due to the lack of the Games for Windows Marketplace.  In December, we finally got a marketplace, but it has one demo and about a dozen trailers. D-

Xbox 360 drops $75 in price the day that Grand Theft Auto IV is released  Another big failure for the Haygood.  I honestly thought MIcrosoft would use this ploy to get extra sales of the former Playstation friendly franchise.  Microsoft did not need the price drop as the 360 version of the game outsold the PS3 version 2 to 1. F

CryEngine2 become the engine of choice for game companies  If the game company is Crytek, then yes, it has become the engine of choice, but so far, UE3.0 and Source have been the engine du jour for developers on all the consoles and PC.  Thanks Crytek, for sucking me into the hype of you awesome looking game engine. F

PS3 wins sales race for the holiday 2008 season  Okay, at this point, I realize I had to have been smoking something from Kaz over at Sony, because what the hell was I thinking with this one.  Actually, I thought that Blu-Ray would be the magic tool for Sony, but apparently, $50-70 price cuts are much more meaningful to consumers looking to spend hard earned money. F

Home launches in October with rave reviews, but will charge for certain services  Again, if rave reviews mean people crying foul over a rudimentary service, then I am a big winner.  But in the real world, I have failed myself again, thinking that the PS3 faithful would automatically buy into anything that Sony stirs into the PS3 kool-aid. F

Grand Theft Auto IV will come to the PC for Chirstmas and will support Live for Windows  Well, GTA IV came in December for the PC and it did support Games for Windows Live.  Holy crap how did I hit that one on the nose.  Now if it was only playable for the masses, we would be golden. A+

APB Will Be Cancelled  Not only did APB not get cancelled, but a month after I wrote my prediction article, APB had its coming out party at the 2008 GDC.  This was not a good year for me. F

Kane and Lynch 2 Will Be Announced and will coincide with the movie property that is being developed  Well, Kane and Lynch 2 has been rumored at, and their is a movie in development, but nothing else has really been said about it.  Logic dictates that when a game sells over a million copies, a sequel cannot be far behind. C

Rock Band will release album downloads on XBL marketplace in April, but will come with the ability to download the MP3s via a PC  Well, we did get album releases from Rock Band, although my timing was a bit off.  And we never did get those MP3 downloads, no matter how cool that would of been.  You can’t blame a guy for hoping. D

So basically beyond one right answer, I was pretty much in the toilet for my predictions for calendar year 2008.  Make sure to stay tuned over the next few days as I make some predictions for 2009, and I hope for a better set of future goggles.