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Predictions for 2009?
So, that happened. Twenty-o-eight was a wild one, full of adventure, heartbreak and technology, and now that we're staring down another year of magical phones and netbooks, rumors and half-truths, it's time for the collective wisdom of Engadgetdamus (you and us) to lay down some predictions for 2009 and down a bit of two-week-old eggnog -- not necessarily in that order. See also: predictions for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Tim: The economic downturn boosts bargain-hunting HD DVD adoption rates so high that Toshiba resurrects the format. Chris: A3000 fever sweeps the globe, leaving Motorola with a commanding 37 percent market share. Darren: ASUS expands Eee line to the ultraportable and traditional notebook market, calls them Eeee and Eeeee, respectively. Joe: slotMusic will single handedly save the music industry. Paul: Microsoft will make up for Zune's continued lack of Xbox integration with totally ingenious new methods of locking up the player. Don: Activision releases Guitar Hero: Air Guitar, Harmonix spends millions trying to play catch-up. Laura: Tiny iPhone, giant iPod. Ross: Asimo becomes self-aware, sets off on magical journey to find his true calling Josh: Steve Jobs lives. What's your take?
A look back: our predictions for 2008
PSP Fanboy has been making predictions every year for the last two years now. We found incredible success the first time around. Did we strike gold in 2008? Let's find out. PSP Prediction #1: New limited edition PSP bundles with high-profile games and peripherals."SCEA will release a special gold PSP-2000 system that includes God of War: Chains of Olympus and a Memory Stick for $200." Yes! We got that one right ... almost The God of War bundle came with a red PSP and -- we guessed it -- retailed for $200. Unfortunately, we were wrong that "Sony will release a PSP system bundled with GPS in the US." Drats. PSP Prediction #2: The PSP Store will debut a huge franchise exclusively for download.The PlayStation Store was successfully launched this year, so we get that right. The Store includes Network-exclusive games like Syphon Filter and Super Stardust Portable. They're not "huge" games, but they're still pretty big titles. Japan has also fully embraced the Store, offering all first-party titles as downloadable games. PSP Prediction #3: Square Enix will bring tons of PS1 love to PSP."PSP fans will find that Square Enix will resurrect many of its long-forgotten PS1 franchises back to the PSP." We were right about that one ... but only in Japan. However, Square Enix showed some more love for PSP by moving games like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, The 3rd Birthday and Final Fantasy Agito XIII to our favorite handheld.
Seeing the future from the past
We'll be seeing a lot of predictions about the immediate future in the coming days. We're not immune here at TUAW and you'll likely get some predictions from your humble bloggers, but it is really interesting to look back and see how our current technology was (or was not) predicted in the past.Here is a link to a talk by Nicholas Negroponte from 1984. At the time, Negroponte was head of the MIT Media Lab, and company CEOs were always taking their people there to see what the future might have to offer. This video is from the year the Macintosh appeared. Negroponte talked about touch screens, high resolution monitors, and the future of user interfaces. It is a fascinating presentation, and his predictions for the most part are right on target. It's almost 30 minutes long, but give it a try and I think you'll find it pretty eye-opening.It isn't easy predicting the future. I remember seeing the General Motors film about the future done for the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York. Most of those predictions were wrong, and very 'Buck Rogers.' Robots doing housework, automated cars and a lot of other things that haven't come to pass, at least not yet.Negroponte, who now is behind the One Laptop Per Child project, has had a very keen eye over time. Many of the things he predicted came to pass in products released by Apple, which have benefited users immensely. [via Funky Space Monkey]
The Daily Grind: Looking towards 2009
This year's joyous non-denominational festive season (to borrow a phrase from our own Tateru) has come to a close -- and there's probably more than one unfortunate reader out there who has trudged into the office today. (To those readers, we offer our greatest sympathies. At least the greatest sympathies we're capable of offering while grinding the rest of the way to level 80.) But as 2008 winds down towards the new year, we have a question to pose you, whether you find yourself at home, at work, or anywhere in between: with this year mostly behind us, what are you looking forward to in the future? We have an array of exciting games on the horizon: SWTOR, DCUO, and STO just to name a few of the easily acronymized options. Are you looking forward to any juicy new releases in the next year or is your new year's wish something that's not on our radar?
Analyst predicts new Zelda game in 2009
Here's a little-known fact: If industry analysts go too long without foretelling something – anything – they break out in a nasty case of hives. That may be why Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian has come forward with his latest prediction, namely that Nintendo will release a new Zelda game for the Wii sometime in 2009.While anticipating "potentially fewer hit titles" across the board next year, the soothsayer notes to Gamespot that his prophecy for a follow-up to Twilight Princess, as well as a new "Princess Peach adventure," is little more than guesswork at this point. Traditionally, Nintendo has released just a single principle Zelda title per console cycle, though given that the last game started life on the GameCube gives Sebastian's prediction a bit more weight, if only slightly. As for us, we gave up trying to read Nintendo's body language a long time ago, and have just resigned ourselves to take the waggles as they come.
"Next Christmas, the iPod will be dead, gone, kaput."
It's the end of the year, a time of reflection, in which we look back at the year that was and what happened during. But The Independent isn't stopping there -- they went back and dug up some of the world's most famous incorrect predictions. And yes, Bill Gates' 640k is in there, as is Ken Olsen's "...there is no reason for any individual to have a computer at his home." Whoops. But there's also a good iPod one in there -- apparently on the iPod's release, someone from Amstrad claimed it a fad, saying that, "Next Christmas, the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput." A few Christmases have come and gone since then, and of course, the iPod is still huge. That list also reminded me of the famous Nano hater, Motorola's Ed Zander, who said of the iPod nano's release: "Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?" He, of course, was distraught that Apple's then new invention might take attention away from his new Rokr phone, and despite the fact that Motorola later claimed he was joking, we all know the Rokr went on to not only become the USA's most popular handset, but it's the Rokr who has ads all over the place this holiday season. Oh wait. We might be wrong about that one. Everyone makes mistakes, no? Thanks, Jean!
TUAW Predicts! The October 14th notebook event
With the October 14th Apple Notebook Event just around the corner, the TUAW blogger squad decided it was time to look into our iCrystalBalls and make a SWAG predictions about what laptop goodness will be announced by the Cupertino Kids on Tuesday. To make this extra crunchy, we're not only posting our best guesses as to what will actually be announced, but what Steve J. will announce as "one more thing". Steve Sande Best Guess -- The entire MacBook line will be made of aluminum, and the 15" and 17" models will get slightly faster processors and more installed RAM. If that's the only announcement, expect Apple's stock to dive even further than it has during the recent stock market freefall. One More Thing -- The iTablet. Netbooks are selling like hotcakes, so Apple will get in on the action by coming out with a 9" tablet with a virtual keyboard and multi-touch support. Since it is all display and no keyboard, it will weigh less than two pounds. Think of an über-iPhone. Victor Agreda, Jr. Best Guess -- Ditto what Steve said, except I think a drop in price will happen in light of tough economic times. Despite what some analysts may babble about, Apple is interested in the long game, and that means building more market share. To stay in the game they have to get more price competitive on the low end. One More Thing -- Again, I agree with Steve, although I wouldn't call this a tablet. More like a mini-Air with a decent keyboard (Apple has long been in favor of keeping decent-sized keyboards on smaller laptops) and touchscreen up top. I think the form factor will be something clever and surprising. If it appears at all, of course. Robert Palmer I think we'll see higher-end MacBook enclosures made of aluminum, and a sub-$1,000 model still made from white plastic. There's a part of me that says they won't ditch plastic altogether, because of the style factor: I bet there will be some people who still want a black MacBook. Hey, maybe there will be a black aluminum MacBook. Classy. One More Thing -- I'm still bearish on the iTablet. I think Apple has too much invested in the iPhone as a mobile platform to try and dilute it with another form factor with a different screen size. If it's a Mac, I'm not a fan of jury-rigging traditionally mouse-driven operating systems for styluses. Personally, I just don't think there will be "one more thing." He hasn't done that in a while, especially at "themed" events (like the music event last month). Michael Rose I'm also fairly well convinced that the $800 MacBook (dare we call it the MacBook Jr.?) is inbound on Tuesday, although I'm not sure that the manufacturing rumors are completely on target. The mutterings about a mystery port on the new MacBook -- and a dockability patent from years past -- are starting to sound credible too. One More Thing: I would love to see a BTO touchscreen option... and maybe a technology preview of an iTablet for delivery later in 2009. Mike Schramm New MacBooks are a given -- the Nvidia rumor sounds credible to me, not to mention that it's just what would push me to finally replace my old G4 Powerbook (though I'll miss my little 12" screen). "One more thing" seems like it's trending towards an AppleTV upgrade -- we've got HD content on the iTunes store, so it's time to have a set-top box that's fitting to play that content on. I'm hearing lots of Mac mini rumors as well, but I wonder if Apple will ever upgrade the mini -- it's small, it sells as-is, why break what's not broken? Of course, as Victor mentioned in an email, "Whatever happens, AAPL will drop 10% because iUnicorn wasn't announced..." Think we're out of our minds? Let's hear your prediction in the comment section!
September 9th Predictions
With the September 9th "Let's Rock" event confirmed at Yerba Buena, TUAW readers seem confident that we're about to see a new iPod debut. 70% of you agreed on that point. Rumors point to a revamped nano, with a longer silhouette. This new shape makes the nano easier to hold onto without dropping, especially when running. An updated Nike kit appears likely. Nike support is long overdue for the iPod touch and, especially, the iPhone 3G with its built-in GPS system. Rumors suggest that the update will include more biometric logging and feedback for the stats-obsessed athlete in you. Read more below...
Scoring the Massively E3 bingo card
If you missed it, prior to heading in the direction of E3 we joined Joystiq and the other network sites in pulling together a predictive Bingo card for the big event. We jotted down a number of things that we thought for sure would make an appearance, and laid out a number of news tidbits that we were almost sure wouldn't get covered at the event. As it turns out, we did okay despite some major upsets. We'll own up – this was a pretty different event from a lot of others. Concepts and games we were sure would get talked up didn't get mentioned, while some out-of-left field announcements hit during the week. Read on below the cut to see how we faired from A to ... well, F.
Nintendo press conference bingo results
Eat it, Microsoft bingo! With six out of our 24 predictions for Nintendo's E3 press conference coming true, we wiped the floor with your paltry five correct predictions from Microsoft's conference. Of course, the Microsoft results don't count all the confirmed MS news that leaked out outside the press conference. And of course, both bingo games utterly failed to get the five in a row that's traditionally considered a win. But who cares? We're number one! We're number one!
Wii Warm Up: The most likely
So, out of all of our recent E3 Nintendo briefing (Wii) predictions, which do you think is the most likely? If you could pick only one that you had to guess was going to happen, which would it be? What's your biggest hope for tomorrow's conference?
Massively's E3 Week Prediction Bingo
#bingochart { border: 2px solid #111; border-collapse: collapse; } #bingochart td { padding: 1px 0px 1px 0px; border: 1px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; text-align: center; margin: 0; font-size: 70%; } #bingochart th { padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: top; text-align: center; margin: 0; } AoC is Huge! Firefly MMO News No BioWare MMO News MMOs the Future of PC Gaming Red 5 Announces Their Game Consoles are the Future of MMOs "We're not after WoW Numbers" Animal Crossing: the MMO Free RealmsInfo Microtransactions - Future of MMOs Guild Wars 2 Info Cryptic's Star Trek Online Free Space The Agency Info Secret World Info DirectX 10 Compatible! Social Tools the Future of MMOs Champions Online Info APB Info DCUO Info Free to Play the Future of MMOs Valve MMO Announced 38's Copernicus Unveiled Carbine's Game Announced Turbine's Next Project var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/The_MMO_gaming_E3_2008_prediction_bingo_card'; Every year it's customary to roll out predictions on what will and won't show up at the current year's E3 event. With Massively heading in the direction of the LA Convention Center already, we thought it might be fun to offer up some likely (and highly unlikely) predictions of what might get talked about next week. In reality, this is sort of a "future of the MMO industry list" as everything on here is more-or-less a current or upcoming trend. The only question is whether any given item will get discussed next week.Each of those nice images is a link, which will take you into our E3 Predictions Gallery. Don't know who Carbine or Red 5 are? Not sure about Copernicus? If you don't understand one of our bingo squares, be sure to dig down and find out what all the fuss is about. We'll be bringing you all the MMO dirt you can stand next week, so hopefully this will tide you over until then. Enjoy!%Gallery-27434%
Nintendo E3 2008 press conference: Let's play bingo!
#bingochart { border: 2px solid #111; border-collapse: collapse; } #bingochart td { padding: 1px 0px 1px 0px; border: 1px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; text-align: center; margin: 0; font-size: 80%; line-height: 90%; } #bingochart th { padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: top; text-align: center; margin: 0; } #bingochart a{ filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=100); -moz-opacity: 1;} #bingochart a:hover { filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=80); -moz-opacity: 0.80;} DS Lite redesign Mega Man 9 That pesky storage problem More Mario sports DLC A new Wii peripheral Link returns Even more Fit What comes after FFIV? Pikmin, baby, yeah! Dragon Quest IX Layton sequels Fanboys love Reggie New Wii colors Balance Board games Guitar Hero for everyone More language trainers Chrono Trigger Pokémon Platinum DS Novel to US Wii Music Captain Rainbow Spore Creatures Animal Crossing Wii Kid Icarus var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Nintendo_E3_2008_press_conference_bingo'; Tuesday can't get here soon enough. There are so many possibilities for Nintendo's big event at E3 that it was difficult to compile them all into a neat little list, and that's without even considering the rest of the show! Even so, some things are predictable, and we've taken a peek at our trusty magic 8-ball and prepared a play-along bingo card for keeping track of all of the awesome Tuesday will bring. Click each square above to read more about what we think we will -- and won't -- see at this year's Nintendo conference, or, if you're feeling expansive, check out our full predictions for the show as a whole. We're barely scratching the surface, and there's tons we're not talking about -- like Disgaea, the next Cooking Mama game, Kirby, and Fire Emblem. But we are laying out some pretty bold statements for this year's E3. Don't forget to check out the full version of our Wii predictions, too, and print out the card to play along at home.Nintendo's conference begins Tuesday, July 15, at 9:00am PT / 12:00 pm ET. Don't miss the full schedule (so far) of E3 briefings, as well as the other bingo cards from around the network.
DFC predicts $57 billion gaming market in 2009, Wii to drive
The soothsayers at analyst group DFC Intelligence have revised their already rosy outlook for the game industry in 2009, predicting that the market, including consoles, PC and online games, could now reach a mind-blowing $57 billion by next year. DFC foresees that much of this growth will be driven by (surprise!) the Wii, a platform DFC's David Cole feels "has the chance to be one of the best selling systems of all-time." Looking further ahead, DFC backed off of its previous prediction that annual PS3 game sales would surpass those on the Wii by 2012, now stating that the pair will simply be equals. Still, with the lion's share of top selling titles for the Wii coming from Nintendo itself, fellow analyst Jeremy Miller adds that "for many third party publishers this means they will have much greater success on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, even if Wii sales continue to be strong." But what of the PC? Oh, there's love there as well, with gaming on the personal computer expected to reach an impressive $19 billion on its own by 2013, no doubt steered by online sales, which exceeded a staggering $7 billion in 2007. If DFC is on point with its prophecy, the future is so bright, we may just have to reach into the drawer for some shades.
WWI Predictions by WoW Insider
The 2008 Worldwide Invitational is going down this weekend in Paris, and everyone is abuzz about what might happen. Will we see a release date for Wrath of the Lich King? What is that teaser on the Blizzard page all about? And will we finally, almost eight years to the day since the last game was released, see a new Diablo game? You've got questions, we've got predictions. We here at WoW Insider have put our collective heads together to predict exactly what we'll see at the press conferences and ceremonies this weekend, and each blogger's predictions are after the jump. We're putting it all up front now, so that afterwards, we can see if we were right or wrong. And you're welcome to join us -- put your prediction (or just agree or disagree with ours) in the comments below.Of course, we're all guessing based on rumors and hearsay at this point -- we won't know for sure what's going on until Blizzard confirms it this weekend, and of course WoW Insider will be there to let you know right away. But in the meantime, here's what we think we're going to hear about from Paris in the next few days.
Wii Warm Up: Looking ahead
Next month, we'll probably know the answer to this question, but for now, it's fun to speculate. What do you think this holiday season's Hot New Thing will be? Kid Yawn Icarus? An all-new Nintendo game? Something exciting by a third party developer (we can only hope!)? We'd love to hear your wildest speculation.
Breakfast topic: Cha cha cha changes
I have to admit, I was a little bit astonished by news of patch 2.4.3. We know that Blizzard is ramping up for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, as they did for the Burning Crusade. The two things that stand out most to me are the Cheat Death nerf and the reduction of riding skill level requirement to 30. Even as a Cosmo Girl, I don't really care much about Harris Piltion's new line of designer bags. (Unless those bags have 24 slots and don't have tacky, brand-name logos on them.) I think we can expect more changes in the not-too-distant future. We've already seen the death of most raid attunements. I expect to see the cost of epic flying skill reduced considerably in future patches. The same thing happened with epic land mounts, and long ago Drysc hinted that such a change may be in the works. I'd also like to see an additional character slot or two added to each realm. What changes do you predict will occur prior to Wrath's release?
Aftereffects of the Activision-Blizzard merger
Unless something crazy happens, it seems that the Activision-Blizzard merger (which is really the Activision-Vivendi merger, actually) will go down without a problem -- shareholders are voting on it this week, so by next week we should see confirmation that Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft are under the same umbrella.Gamasutra has posted a nice long feature about what exactly that means, for both companies and for the rest of the industry. As we predicted, there probably won't be huge repercussions for either of the biggest companies involved -- both Activision and Blizzard will continue to go their own separate ways for now, sharing only a name among investors (Gamasutra even says the names on the game boxes won't change at all). The biggest impact will be on the little guys in between -- Activision's previous shareholders now have to answer to Vivendi (who will hold a majority stock in the company), and Viviendi's smaller division, the former glory of Sierra Games, will have to answer to Activision before publishing any of their titles.And of course the other big consequence we've seen so far is that Bobby Kotick apparently feels he knows everything there is to know about the MMO game. Sure. For now, though, it's business as usual for both Activision and Blizzard -- if there will be any change in either company because of the merger, we likely won't see it for a while.[via Blizzplanet]
Analysts predict big jump in May game sales
Even though NPD is set to release its monthly drip of "official" North American console and game sales data later this week, some impatient people just can't sit on their hands and wait. Those people include game industry analysts, many of whom are predicting a large year-over-year jump in software revenues for the month of May.The exact size of the predicted jump ranges from a 30% increase from Lazard Capital Market's Colin Sebastian to a 43% bump from Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson. Medbush Morgan's prolific prognosticator Michael Pachter splits the difference, predicting a 39% increase in sales. Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are expected to continue their sustained strong sales, along with relative newcomers Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV.Speaking of GTA4, Pachter doesn't think the game will lead to a significant bump in system sales for either the PS3 or Xbox 360. He forecasts the Wii will again dominate monthly console sales with 750,000 units sold, compared to 250,000 Xbox 360s and 225,000 PS3s. In other news, we predict the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
TUAW predicts WWDC '08: How did we do?
The dust has settled from the stampede of announcements from yesterday's WWDC Keynote so it's time to take a look back at our predictions and see how we did! First, let's take a look at what was released at this year's WWDC: Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) seeds for developers MobileMe iPhone 3G iPhone 2.0 firmware ship date Let's see what we predicted: .Mac rebranding (with support for iPhone/PC) iPhone 3G Mac OS X 10.6 seeded iTablet Mac nano Flash on the iPhone Video on the iPhone Enterprise solutions for iPhone Over-the-Air syncing for "MobileMe" Redesigned MacBook Pro iPhone 2.0 delayed / ship date So, how did we do?Many of the things we predicted did actually come true (to our amazement!). We are extremely pleased with our predictions this year as we guessed everything that was released. All in all, we were 54.5% (6 right, 5 wrong) correct with our predictions. But we were spot on with the .Mac rebranding ("MobileMe"), 10.6 "Snow Leopard" preview, and the iPhone 3G / iPhone 2.0 announcement / delayed release. %Poll-15454%
