We can never quite know what the future will hold, but we can make some educated guesses. Although we’re not quite ready to make the call of Half Life 3 through 6 or predict the return of Bubsy, if at least half of these things don’t pan out, we’ll strongly consider eating our hats (or simply not making predictions next year).
We’ll know exactly what the next generation of consoles will offer by mid-2013
Rumours have been flying, and few of them seem to have been officially denied. We’re expecting the next PlayStation and Xbox to be revealed by the time E3 rolls around.
We’re expecting both consoles to move even closer to being dedicated entertainment systems, rather than focused gaming consoles, and we’re really hoping that the inevitable next iteration of Kinect delivers what the original promised. Better yet, we hope both consoles are a bit better future-proofed: we want to be able to upgrade components like we would a PC.
We’ll stop Kickstarter-ing so many things
Kickstarter is starting to feel a bit dirty. Too many big names are asking for a bunch of cash upfront while genuine newcomers are being pushed to the side.
Stretch goals are making us feel like features are being held to ransom, unless we give the developers a whole heap of cash. We’re seeing statistics of unfinished fully-funded games that are concerning us. We can’t help but feel that the bubble may burst.
The Vita will remain a well loved niche machine
The Vita is less than a year old, but it’s already starting to feel like it’s incapable of delivering a true killer app, one that makes the system seem essential. But truthfully, the Vita is already sort of great. There are loads of great games, and we don’t expect things to dry up so badly within a year that this will no longer be the case. Tearaway looks particularly amazing.
Grand Theft Auto V will be a bit underrated
Perhaps not critically – Grand Theft Auto V is sure to review fairly well – but we have it so good these days that it’s easy to take things for granted, and a lot of people were indifferent to many of the incredible things GTA IV achieved.
It’s easy to get cynical about any series as big as Grand Theft Auto, or to overhype products in our head – we wouldn’t be surprised if forums go wild with unjustified complaints about this one.
We’ll see multiple (big) Call of Duty games announced or released
Collectively, the nine-or-so studios working on Call of Duty have more than one new game in the works. We’ve heard legend of Activision reps making reference to overseeing ‘multiple unannounced Call of Duty titles’.
Activision have a history of bleeding franchises dry, but we think the market could easily support two big Call of Duty releases a year…as long as only one of them is a Triple A first person shooter.
We won’t be quite so stroppy about things
We spent a lot of time whinging this year. But Platinum Games, the undisputed champions of making games worth playing, have between two and four games out next year, so already things are looking good. Better yet, if we see new consoles announced, we may well also start to see the swansongs for the current consoles emerging. The Last Guardian, anyone?
Meanwhile, Nintendo will inevitably announce at least one unbelievably exciting Wii U game next E3. Super Mario Galaxy 3 in HD? A Legend of Zelda with GamePad Support? Point is, we’ve already got plenty of reasons to board the 2013 hype train when it rolls into the station.
By James O'Connor