I won't lie to you. After my dismal 2010 predictions campaign I played it safe with my 2011 picks. PSP 2 with a touch screen? Sure. Playstation Move will suck? Done. New Nintendo console announced? Boom. I hit some softballs, sure. Am I proud? Not really, but I'll take what I can get. This year things get a bit hazy as the whole industry seems to be on the cusp of either announcing new consoles or coasting through one more year.

My first prediction is so bold they're going to turn it into a Doritos flavor.

Sony will not announce a new console this year. Instead, they will re-launch the PSN as a more competitive online service with heavy Vita integration.

There you have it! Read on for predictions from the GWJ staff. As usual, I encourage everyone to make their own predictions in the comments. I'll be locking the thread up for posterity in a few weeks so no take-backs! Looks like some industrious forum members have already started talking about last year's picks in this thread.

For the last decade I’ve had the luxury of owning every gaming platform available, so the need to marry myself to one device or another hasn’t existed for a long time. I’ve sampled the best every publisher has had to offer. I’ve swung peripherals, lost handheld devices and given plenty of stuff away. Today’s Xbox becomes a gift for my nephew once it’s been replaced with a new 360.

For all this time and for all these devices, the one constant has been my PC. While the console upgrades and revisions are easily tracked, my computer has shambled through the past decade shedding old parts in favor of new ones. AMD processors have fallen and been replaced with Intel. Nvidia cards replaced with ATI. Water cooling systems, faster burners and solid state drives have found their way in and out of my cases. But there’s never been a full stop, build a brand new computer moment. I can imagine my old motherboard whispering fevered instructions to the long-standing CD burner to be passed onto its replacement. Soon enough it’s put to pasture at my mother-in-law’s house to live out its years watching the occasional email go by and on a good day, Solitaire.

The gift and curse of being on the upgrade treadmill is most apparent when you take steps to silence the beastly fans running in your machine.

After watching Nintendo reveal their new Wii U controller with hardly a nod toward the actual console that plugs into the TV, it’s become clear that how we control our games is a good deal more important than what displays them. Think back to when the 360 and PS3 were announced. Remember the spec wars? How many gigaflops the PS3 could churn compared to the 360 was a big deal. Now companies like Apple don't bother disclosing how much RAM the iPad 2 has, because it doesn't matter. Whenever a new product is announced with more technical specs than user features, you know it's time to back away slowly.

Technology only matters so far as it can do the job and get out of the way.

If Troika Games LLC somehow turned into your uncle, he would probably have thrown himself off a bridge after yet another lousy sales report hit his desk. His will would be written in crayon, leaving you nothing but a series of half-built tree-houses in the backyard and a string of apologies.

The tree-houses in question would be Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Temple of Elemental Evil. All three were inspired works that ultimately failed because they were unfinished, buggy and, in many ways, reaching too far. It wasn’t until the mod community raised their collective hammers and went to work finishing what Troika had started that we came to understand just how cool uncle Troika was.

Today we honor them with a list of some essential mods for each game and reasons why you should give them a second look—now that they actually work.

It's that special time of year again when we all put on our funny hats and predict the future. Last year wasn't pretty for me (I said that last year, too) as I predicted the decline of Rockstar Games only to give Red Dead Redemption my game of the year nod a few weeks ago. I don't think there's enough jam in the whole world to make that crow go down any smoother.

As hope springs eternal, so do our predictions. This year I'm going to nail it. Things are going to change, I can feel it. My first prediction is so rich in nutrients, you won't have to eat anything for the rest of the day.

Every MMORPG that launches with a $14.99 monthly fee will fail to meet their goals, hemorrhage staff and ultimately scale back until it's positioned to scrape by.

It's time to make your predictions, folks! Make sure you check out last year's thread and see how you did. As usual, I'll be locking this one down in a few weeks.

Last night I got a call from one of my employees. "This may be the weirdest call you ever get from me but ... you gotta talk me out of buying Cataclysm. I know I shouldn't do it, but the ads are everywhere!"

He's a recovering guild leader who has rediscovered his love for guitar and making music since shutting down his Blizzard account. I think I managed to talk him off the ledge, but we'll see if he shows up for work on time over the next few weeks.

Like him, I find myself drawn back to the flame, but I don't view Blizzard's latest with the jaundiced eye of the former addict. It's more a heady mix of being a gaming hipster (it's too popular now, I liked it in beta) and having seen enough people burn out because they couldn't just be on friendly terms with MMORPGs. They either seemed head over heels in love with the games or completely enraged by them. At least, that's what I try to console myself with as I hear countless inside jokes from a weekly group of friends that enjoy a lot of laughs every Monday as they assault dungeons together. Those bastards found a balance with WoW that I don't think I've ever trusted myself to find.

Like a hammer, video games are neutral tool right until you wrap your hand around the handle. After that, you're either hanging pictures or busting holes in the dry wall. Or clubbing yourself in the head. My relationship with WoW and games like it has always been soured by avoiding a lot of the best parts for fear of letting it take up too much of my time. Even a regular poker night takes planning and execution to get to the fun stuff. Resisting those time sucking elements of putting it all together saddles the genre with having to deliver a really fun gameplay experience without all the social trimmings that most of it is designed toward encouraging. It doesn't just kill my WoW experience, it practically destroys the whole genre before it even has a chance.

Sean Sands has been telling me for months now that Cataclysm fixes a lot of those time sucking issues and gets you into the good stuff faster. There's more gameplay variety too, so even if the party dynamics demand more time than I might be able to give, there should still be something worth the $40 to look forward to.

The same could have been said about the Lich King expansion to some degree -- so why buy Cataclysm now? I miss my friends, mostly. We podcast and chat and do all those good things, but we don't have time to play much like we used to. I can either stand on the sidelines and jeer at them or I can suit up and collect some crab meat. It may only get me through the winter draught until the new year, but that's probably better than standing out in the cold, peeking through the window.

For the fifth time that night I rewind the cassette and hit play. “And now, the one you’ve all been waiting for … Color Me Badd with All 4 Love.” The music starts and I thank the stars I was able to catch the song on my clock radio tape recorder. I sit up straight in my bed as the lyrics kick in, swaying to the music and taking a deep breath. “I’m so glad you’re my girl, I’ll do anything for you,” I sing. I’m 11 years old and I’ve never been brave enough to sing in front of anyone. When I’m alone, I feel like I have this untapped well of talent just begging to be unleashed. I close my eyes and pretend I’m singing in front of the whole school, everyone in awe of my sweet voice.

I’m mid-note when my mom opens my bedroom door. “What are you doing in here? Go to bed.” In the dim light cast by my nightlight, I see a lingering smirk on her face as she leaves. I think she’s laughing at me. I imagine her sitting in front of the mirror and combing her hair as she embarrasses me in front of dad; snickering about my crappy voice as they get ready for bed.

That moment in time unfurls and wraps itself around my neck for the next 16 years. Whether I’m in church or at a Christmas party singing carols – my throat won’t open up all the way when I try to sing in public. I pretend I don’t care and sing in a warbling monotone. There’s no joy in it for me.

“It’s in the basement; follow me.”

I follow Alan down the steps and into the cool, dark room. My toes curl on the cold cement floor as he stumbles and curses his way to the light switch. I’d asked to see his collection of Magic cards so I could bring a few decks to the local game shop where a friend of mine works. Alan is a client, so I know him pretty well. But discovering another geek in your midst requires a leap of faith and a prayer that he’s not going to reveal his life size elf queen statue -- who also happens to be his wife.

The fluorescents hum to life and the cold floor is forgotten as I look at the hundreds of boxes arrayed on countless shelves and tables. “Yep,” he says, hooking his thumbs under invisible suspenders. “Every Magic card ever made.”

With Wizards sponsoring us this week (don't worry, we're off the clock here) it got me thinking about Alan and what his place is in our digital future.

The Crackdown 2 demo was giving me some serious déjà vu as I jumped from ledges to rooftops collecting agility orbs. I played the first game when it launched back in 2007 so it’s been a while ... but man did those buildings look familiar. Turns out there’s a reason for that – it’s the same city. It’s not even a radical a new take on Pacific City. It’s the same place we explored to death three years ago with some architectural wrinkles.

Gametrailers does a good job highlighting this in their latest comparison between the first game and the upcoming sequel. You should watch it. Go on, I’ll wait.

I’ve often said I don’t mind sequels because they give developers a chance to do amazing things with the tools they spent years developing. Uncharted 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 made great strides with a couple years and a mature platform to work from. Infamous 2 looks to do the same while moving the game to a whole new city. Crackdown 2 is different. When asked in a recent interview on Gamasutra how long the game has been in development, Ruffian mission designer Martin Livingston was forthright. “We've been working hard solidly, fully ramped up for a little over a year. It's a short space of time. It's been a very fast-process game.”

Realtime Worlds, the developers of the original Crackdown, were too busy working on APB to do a proper sequel. It fell to the newly formed Ruffian Games to crank out a new game on a short time table. It’s tricky enough to do it when you’re established -- doubly so when you’re forming a new studio at the same time. “It's been one very fast push with not too many problems. It's gone pretty smoothly,” Livingston tells Chris Remo. “It was hard work, but that was offset by the fact that everyone loves what they're doing.” That's a bit like a chef saying he loves reheating and serving dishes he made three days ago.

The end result appears to be the original Crackdown with support for up to four players coop, the added benefit of everyone going off to do their own missions and a few other light features and tweaks. This would sound pretty good to me if it were a big DLC expansion for the original game. At a $60 retail release it’s the kind of cash grab EA would have pulled in the late 90's.

A new game franchise can be a fragile thing. Most publishers have figured this out and often spend more resources on sequels than they did on the original games. After a mere 15 months in development, Crackdown 2 has passed certification and should hit shelves on July 6th. It remains to be seen if the game that surprised everyone back in 2007 can still delight gamers who just paid full price for nearly the same experience they had three years ago. I was pumped when they announced a sequel to a game I loved. Now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It’s been four years since I last walked into the chaotic bowels of E3. At the time, the Nintendo Revolution was announced as the “Wii” and the Sony PSP still looked it could be a contender. We even thought Huxley had a chance of seeing the light of day.

The following year E3 was gutted and left for dead on a San Diego pier. Not willing to spend a ton of money on a convention that didn’t want visitors anymore, I’ve bided my time and waited to see if E3 would ever get back to being the all-encompassing event that it used to be. With an estimated 40,000 visitors this year (still 20,000 shy of the 2006 attendance numbers) I’d say a happy medium has been found. While not quite the crushing mob we’re used to, it’s more than enough to ensure that most of the major publishers will want to put their best foot forward.

Even as I shove my passport into my travel bag, I still wonder if there’s any point in being there. A site like GWJ doesn’t exactly thrive on breaking news and hot scoops. We’ll be seeing the same thing everyone else does. So why bother? The people sitting at home will probably see more of the games than I will and every major press conference will be streamed in high definition. All this without the press of bodies, the sore feet, the lines and the hordes of nerds standing in packs and being whipped into a frenzy by booth babes tossing a few free t-shirts.

So why take a week off my day job and go? As a gamer, I think there’s a great deal of value in actually holding the controller and playing something for myself. There’s also the thrill of being completely blindsided by something cool that no one else is really talking about. The Witcher is a prime example -- I would never have cottoned to if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

There’s also a certain vibe you can’t pick up without being there. While PAX has rightfully usurped E3 as the gamer community convention of choice, there are plenty of friends of colleagues at the show that I’ll never see otherwise. Running into people you know and sharing hot tips on what games to check out is a bit like treasure hunting. It’s a hell of a lot of work, but it’s fun in an adult, Easter egg hunting sort of way.

Finally, it’s all about the context. It’s one thing to play a game at home and enjoy the end result. It’s a rare opportunity to talk to a passionate developer about what they’re trying to accomplish while the work is still ongoing. Like most aspects of E3; it’s not essential to enjoying the hobby, but it sure helps.