Bold Predictions 2016!

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It's that magical time of year once again! I figure if I keep predicting games I want will be announced eventually they'll be made manifest. So THIS is the year for Red Dead Redemption 2. Catch the fever! There's some interesting wrinkles in 2016 thanks to rumors of Nintendo's next console and the many questions surrounding the fate of VR. Will this finally be the year? It's time to make your predictions!

It's also time to eat some crow. Make sure you revisit 2015's thread and see how you did!

Shawn Andrich

Microsoft
- $50 price drop as they continue to chase marketshare
- Hololens will remain an R&D project with no consumer model in sight. 3K dev kit? Yeesh.

Sony
- No price drop this year
- Morpheous will launch this Fall for $499.

Nintendo NX
- Vague announcement in Spring. Full announcement at E3. Launch in Fall.
- NX will feature a controller that doubles as a mobile touch screen gaming device, blurring the lines between living room and on the go platform. Kind of a REALLY fancy Dreamcast controller. The logical evolution of the Wii-U gamepad.
- System will not be backward compatible and will focus on growing a new library of games suitable for touch screen gaming on the go and big ticket games. There will be regular controller support.

- New Zelda will launch for Wii U and the NX with a few extra features

VR Predictions
- Oculus Rift launches and will remain difficult to buy until the Fall due to stock shortages. It will not hurt VR’s case, people will be excited about VR in general but the door will be wide open for competition.

- The touch controllers will launch in the Fall but few games will support them. They will be bundled with the 2.0 version of the Rift in 2017.

- The HTC Vive VR headset kit will cost $699 with controller set. It will be easier to purchase than the Oculus and Valve will announce/launch a new game with it. It won’t be Half-Life 3.

Star Citizen

- Squadron 42 will launch in the Spring as Episodes and finally bring Star Citizen to a feeling of being an actual game. By the end of the year Star Citizen will be a thing that resembles the original pitch. There will be no real MMO style components.

General Predictions

- Red Dead Redemption 2 THIS IS THE YEAR
- An “indie” game will outsell Madden this year.
- Everquest Next will be cancelled
- Minecraft 2 will be announced. f*ck you, that’s why.
- Total War: Warhammer will suck. Not enough depth to really feel like a Total War Game.
- Mobile games will continue to pander to the easy money, cementing the player gap between “hard-core” gamers and phone gamers.

Chris "C" Cesarano

- The Nintendo NX, at least the home console variant, will not release in 2016 (a common one for the GWJ Nintendo fanbase)

- Final Fantasy XV will be a long game, but the world will actually be rather small. We'll be lucky if it spans an entire continent.

- The Occulus Rift will commercially go the way of the OUYA, with the Playstation VR perhaps being the best chance of the experience going mainstream (might be more of a 2017 prediction)

- Nintendo will announce a new Metroid game for NX, but it will somehow still be a disappointment to fans.

- Capcom continues to piss me off by not localizing Dragon's Dogma Online in the West.

Colleen "momgamer" Hannon

- The Steam console that just came out will be a hit with early adopters & Gabe Newell fanboys but be a quiet build with the rest of the audience. Outside that core, the concept of streaming to another device is still in it's early stages, and that's going to be a confusing sell.

- Someone at Square Enix realized that a numbering system that lets you play the games in order is a good thing, and we get Kingdom Hearts 2.8, to slide in between the already released 2.5 and the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3. That doesn't mean their development isn't still a little messy, so I predict that both games will slip their dates around and may not actually release in that order.

- There will be even more Star Wars games released, because that's how the juggernaut rolls. But none of them will be a new Star Wars: X-wing or Star Wars: Tie Fighter, so the re-releases out on GoG will have to sustain us.

- Beyond Good and Evil 2 slipped out of last year, but hope springs eternal. After the way other properties have shipped Ubi should have the right manpower available, so I'm going to take a wishful stand and say that it will ship in 2016.

- My squad will wipe and I will lose the world to aliens many, many times playing X-Com 2.

Greg "doubtingthomas396" Decker

1) Warner Brothers will release another open world game with Arkham style combat. The license will be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it will actually be kind of awesome.

2) Oculus Rift’s system requirements and $600 price point will prove to cool the ardor of many enthusiasts, leading to a price drop in the later half of the year. It won't help.

3) Nintendo will announce that their next console is a handheld system that plugs into a dock that will allow you to play games on your television.

3a) Nintendo’s next console will be digital only, and will not support playing disc-based WiiU games.

3b) Nintendo will continue to link all digital game purchases to hardware serial numbers.

3c) If 3a and 3b are both true, later in the year Nintendo will announce an optical disc drive add-on to allow people to play WiiU games on the new console. It will plug into the dock and the handheld system will become the controller. The WiiU controller will not pair with the NX.

4) Paid mods will return to the news when Bethesda releases the mod kit for Fallout 4. It will only be implemented on consoles, because Bethesda hates console owners and resents having to port their games onto them, as evidenced by how their console ports always work (or, rather, fail to).

5) Everyone will realize that TellTale games has jumped the shark when they announce a Happy Days game in the style of all of their other dialogue-tree adventure games.

Comments

pythagean wrote:

Alright, here we go.

  • PlaystationVR - Will be priced at $400 for just the HMD, or $500 bundled with the move controllers. There will also be a bundle which includes all of this and a PS4 for $750.
  • HTC Vive - Will cost $750 at launch (with motion controllers etc.)
  • Oculus Rift - Oculus will announce a Facebook like social application for the Oculus Rift by the end of the year
  • VR in General - Will slowly start to pick up steam as headsets start to ship, this won't be the "year of VR" though. Maybe by xmas we will see several price drops or bundles with games but I expect that 2016 will be the year that VR starts to find it's way into the marketplace. It won't be a huge deal until a lot more people have them in 2017 and beyond.
  • No Man's Sky - Will be VR compatible

I think you are pretty close to the mark, but:

  • HTC Vive I think the Vive will see a paper launch for $799 in April, with real availability not hitting before July. A second company will announce a SteamVR headset which will launch late 2016 or early 17.
  • Oculus Rift The Rift will be a success for Oculus. It won't come close to console like numbers this year, but will sell 750Kish units by year's end. The Rift 1.5 will be announced as a 2017 product and will included minor tweaks/improvements/camera and will come bundled with Touch at the same 599 price point accompanied by a headseat only option at 499. Oculus will also partner with another cell phone company and expand the number of phones that GearVR is compatible with.

How did I do?

Here we go:

Blizzard will release two Hearthstone expansions this year: another solo adventure mode and a new set of cards to collect. The adventure will be based on Karazhan while the new set of cards will be based on Northrend. Expect lots of freeze cards and a new card type - Dragonkin.

We got one expansion (Grand Tournament) and two adventures this year. I was wrong about the theming.

Bethesda will release Skyrim Remastered for the PS4 / Xbox One in the fall, featuring high rez graphics. It might even be running on a new engine (codenamed Fallout 4).

Wishful thinking.

Sony will revive its relationship with Steam and offer Steam Workshop support for a selection of games. Microsoft responds by allowing official mod support for Minecraft - on Xbox One of course.

More wishful thinking.

One major online gaming publication will close this year.

Unfortunately Joystiq closed early in the year. I'm not happy to be right about that.

The Vita will not get any games announced for the US for 2016.

Somewhat of an exaggeration. Metacritic lists 45 games for the Vita for 2015.

Sony will show off some crazy technology at E3. Gamers not impressed.

Sony's E3 conference was all about the games, so that's a loss for me (but a win for gamers).

Here's my 2016 bold predictions:

Rise of the Tomb Raider for the PS4 is called "The Definitive Edition," and Sony puts significant marketing behind it.

No Man's Sky is great.

One of the three toys to life video games (Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions) will not release a new product line in 2016. They have oversaturated the market.

Studios will continue to put out remasters, including Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, and Dragon's Dogma.

Sony ends their E3 conference by announcing the Morphius price: $400. Mike drop.

I'd love a remaster of Dragon's Dogma. I didn't get to it last gen.

* Valve will officially announce a new game. It won't be Half-Life 3. It will be compatible with VR, but VR won't be required.

* Playstation VR will get a quick lead on the competition, and Vive will trail behind. Oculus will have a vocal cult following, and fans of it will be pissed off that it's not as popular as Playstation VR.

* Nintendo's new account system will work fine for purchases made after the system goes up, but will screw over people who made purchases up until then.

* Rocket League will gain in eSports popularity. By the year's end, it will be neck and neck with CSGO.

* Nintendo will be more involved in the mobile market than just games. Their new OS for the NX will be Android based, and they will release a phone with the same OS. You will be able to stream games from the NX console to your phone. Your phone will act as the Wii U gamepad for the Wii U backwards compatible games.

* Telltale Batman will be great, 9/10s across the board, but people won't play it after feeling both Telltale and Batman fatigue.

* Rocksteady will announce that they're working on a completely original IP at E3.

* There will be a tragic accident that happens while somebody is using a VR headset, and the news media will blame the technology. There will be a huge backlash against it.

Aristophan wrote:

Studios will continue to put out remasters, including Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, and Dragon's Dogma.

Thus continuing the grand tradition

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd love a remaster of Dragon's Dogma. I didn't get to it last gen.

There is a PC release of Dark Arisen today. Maybe it'll happen?

Much hyped/anticipated games - No Man's Sky, Uncharted 4 and Dark Souls 3 - fail to impress. Averaging 63 on Metacritic.

Much anticipated game, The Last Guardian, is delayed until 2017 as the game is fundamentally redesigned.

Sony announces that it is ending production of the PS Vita. The shipping of new units ceases in December 2016.

Sony and Occulus release their VR systems, Morpheus and Rift in October 2015 with high price tags and a dearth of compelling software. Sales are disastrously poor for both.

Nintendo's NX turns out to be a set of cloud-based gaming services with a bespoke interface device, rather than a conventional console.

Quantic Dream release a good game.

Aristophan wrote:

Studios will continue to put out remasters, including Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, and Dragon's Dogma.

Nevermind a "remastered edition"; I've been waiting more than 5 years for just a PC port of RDR. I finally gave up hope on that a couple years ago. That said, if Rockstar wanted to surprise me (and lots of other people), a remastered edition release on PC would be great.

Aristophan wrote:

Sony ends their E3 conference by announcing the Morphius price: $400. Mike drop.

Who is Mike, and what will he be dropping?

MeatMan wrote:
Aristophan wrote:

Sony ends their E3 conference by announcing the Morphius price: $400. Mike drop.

Who is Mike, and what will he be dropping? ;)

It's a command, clearly He was telling his buddy Mike to drop. Mike will be dropping himself. This could get deep and philosophical.

Console gamers grumble about shelling out $60 for a second controller or $100 for a Kinect. I can't imagine that they'd be willing to spend more than their console costs on a VR headset. $400 would be a mic drop moment, sure, because the conference was over and they chased off their audience.

MeatMan wrote:
Aristophan wrote:

Sony ends their E3 conference by announcing the Morphius price: $400. Mike drop.

Who is Mike, and what will he be dropping? ;)

Mike will be dropping his dad off at the local comedy club. ; D

MeatMan wrote:
Aristophan wrote:

Studios will continue to put out remasters, including Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, and Dragon's Dogma.

Nevermind a "remastered edition"; I've been waiting more than 5 years for just a PC port of RDR. I finally gave up hope on that a couple years ago. That said, if Rockstar wanted to surprise me (and lots of other people), a remastered edition release on PC would be great.

Aristophan wrote:

Sony ends their E3 conference by announcing the Morphius price: $400. Mike drop.

Who is Mike, and what will he be dropping? ;)

Isn't the issue with RDR that the code is being held together with string and duct tape? I recall reading that it's a miracle that game even works due to the working conditions.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Console gamers grumble about shelling out $60 for a second controller or $100 for a Kinect. I can't imagine that they'd be willing to spend more than their console costs on a VR headset. $400 would be a mic drop moment, sure, because the conference was over and they chased off their audience.

Not necessarily, not when that price means a combined system cost around the same price for just the Oculus, which needs at least a $900 rig to run it... The Vive is likely going to be even higher. $400 for VR is going to sound awfully tempting to the 40 million PS4 owners...

VR needs to sound tempting first, and I simply don't think the market for it is that big or that populist. But even then, I maintain that console gamers are too cost-conscious to drive sales of a $400 peripheral, no matter how sexy the technology is.

Here's a fun prediction:

Nintendo will be on stage at Apple's Spring iDevice press conference this year. Nintendo's apps & games launch first on iOS.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

VR needs to sound tempting first, and I simply don't think the market for it is that big or that populist. But even then, I maintain that console gamers are too cost-conscious to drive sales of a $400 peripheral, no matter how sexy the technology is.

Considering how many people balked at the PS3's $600 price tag and the iPhone's $600 initial price limiting early sales I really think somewhere around $400 is an upper limit for most consumer electronics. And that's for multi-purpose things, not specialized electronics like VR headsets which won't be used with everything.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

VR needs to sound tempting first, and I simply don't think the market for it is that big or that populist. But even then, I maintain that console gamers are too cost-conscious to drive sales of a $400 peripheral, no matter how sexy the technology is.

I don't think they can make it much cheaper than that though. The device has a 1080p screen and a 140Hz refresh rate (and it needs to be able to hit a consistent 90+ FPS) in addition to being able to run the main TV screen. Either games on the thing are going to look terrible or the Morpheus will likely have an additional processor built into it. At that point they're essentially selling a mid-high end smartphone built into VR goggles and the $400 price point starts to make a lot more sense.

If PS VR stands any chance it is that some enthusiast early adopters will grab it, and then they'll show their friends that also have PS4's and some of those folks may purchase one as well. I don't think Occulus Rift has that advantage because, while several friends may possess a PS4, I think far fewer would possess a PC capable of running Occulus' requirements, let alone budget.

That's what I'd count on for VR at all having a chance of making it mainstream as opposed to going the way of niche peripherals such as joysticks, steering wheels and dance mats. At best, VR might be the next Wii.

ccesarano wrote:

If PS VR stands any chance it is that some enthusiast early adopters will grab it, and then they'll show their friends that also have PS4's and some of those folks may purchase one as well. I don't think Occulus Rift has that advantage because, while several friends may possess a PS4, I think far fewer would possess a PC capable of running Occulus' requirements, let alone budget.

That's what I'd count on for VR at all having a chance of making it mainstream as opposed to going the way of niche peripherals such as joysticks, steering wheels and dance mats. At best, VR might be the next Wii.

In order for that to happen, I believe PS VR has to be at or less than the cost of the console. If it's more, they've locked in niche permanently.

ccesarano wrote:

I think far fewer would possess a PC capable of running Occulus' requirements, let alone budget.

Right, I've seen 1% of "gaming" PCs bandied about as being "VR-ready" (also mentioned in this Digital Foundry article) and Oculus has already copped to this fact as being their biggest roadblock. The headsets are expensive and you need a beast of a system right now to properly drive them. This is a far cry from the last few years where you could throw $500-600 at a new PC and end up with something on par of slightly better than a console.

A lot of what's also driving the VR interest is sheer unadulterated marketing up and down the supply line. Outside of Apple, PC shipments have been trending downward year after year which probably has many manufacturers scrambling. Stagnation in CPU and GPU tech over the last 5 or so years isn't helping either as there hasn't been a real incentive to upgrade components aside from upgrading a GPU for the odd big budget release like Witcher 3 or throwing an SSD in the box. And you know it's bad when Nvidia spends a good portion of their last two CES presentations talking about autonomous cars instead of their bread and butter GPU tech.

So this whole VR thing comes along (again) and if Oculus and HTC can get enough people to buy in, that helps drive sales of all the other parts in a computer. Which is why you're going to see system builders like Alienware pushing "Occulus ready" systems a lot this year. There's a lot of kool-aid marketing being fed to people for the VR hype, primarily because it's in a lot of companies' best interests to push this technology and push it hard. Coffee is for closers after all

I also wouldn't be surprised if most of the system builders redirect their marketing away from Steam Machine form factors and onto the VR market, as I feel like Steam Machines were a bit of a dud due to the controller being so late to market and the mixed reaction to the controller in general. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the margins are better for higher-end machines, so all the more reason to refocus their efforts.

EDIT: On the upshot, the move toward 4K displays works nicely with the requirements with VR. So eventually the minimal hardware spec for baseline VR tech will eventually become affordable. And I'm sure display manufacturers are happy about the VR push because it means they'll have an available audience to market new monitors towards regardless of a VR boom or bust.

On the other hand, I think we're going to see rapid evolution of the headsets for VR, especially considering we've seen 3 iterations shipped in 4 years. That Oculus you're buying this year? Completely obsoleted by 2018's model which will have higher resolution, a lighter chassis, better tracking, etc. and will... you guessed it... have higher PC requirements. Facebook paid top-dollar for Oculus for the two revenue streams that come with it. One is the software marketplace, the second is the people who are going to splash out for the new Rift every other year.

Anyways, here's some additional predictions for this year:

  • Something is clearly rotten in the state of Steam when Valve's laissez-faire attitude and cold indifference finally causes them some significant headaches. I expect this will be some sort of customer service incident that blows up into a PR fiasco, or there's finally some sort of data breach. 2015 demonstrated there's some tensions between Valve and an overly entitled gaming community bubbling under the surface, and I suspect there's a real risk of that boiling over this year.
  • Valve will port CS:Go to Source 2 this year. Still won't make a game with the number 3 in the title.
  • 2016 will be the year of reality splashing a lot of cold water on the face of 2015's hype and excitement. High buy-in for VR is the first in a list of disappointments to come this year.
ClockworkHouse wrote:

VR needs to sound tempting first, and I simply don't think the market for it is that big or that populist. But even then, I maintain that console gamers are too cost-conscious to drive sales of a $400 peripheral, no matter how sexy the technology is.

I think the appeal of VR is very limited, but for those who are interested a PS4 and $400 peripheral is more accessible than a suitable PC and an Oculus.

- I don't think it comes out this year but just in case, Stellaris will be a disappointment. Not a MOO3 disaster but more like Total War Rome 2.
- There will be a major match-fixing scandal at one of the big Dota2 or LoL events. By "big" event I guess I mean one of the 4 big tournaments for either game.

ccesarano wrote:

So I don't think we're getting the Arkham style TMNT game Greg craves.

Platinum sure is busy these days.

Why do the Turtles have over-stylized lightsabers?

IMAGE(http://images.purexbox.com/news/2016/01/exclusive_screens_activision_and_platinums_cel-shaded_teenage_mutant_ninja_turtles_mutants_in_manhattan_pictured/attachment/5/373x195.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.purexbox.com/news/2016/01/exclusive_screens_activision_and_platinums_cel-shaded_teenage_mutant_ninja_turtles_mutants_in_manhattan_pictured/attachment/2/247x128.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.purexbox.com/news/2016/01/exclusive_screens_activision_and_platinums_cel-shaded_teenage_mutant_ninja_turtles_mutants_in_manhattan_pictured/attachment/1/373x195.jpg)

Here are two crazy predictions

1- increase in violence for games. Think Django Unchained or Robcop.

2- smart phones as controllers. Left & right analog stick virtualized on smart phones. Official apps from Xbox, Sony, Nintendo, Steam, etc. Allowing users to bounce between controller mode on the phone to text mode sending in game chat.

I predict that thanks to their collaboration with DeNA, Nintendo will finally have an account system that people can understand. That people still think purchases are tied to hardware is a complete failure on their part to both clearly articulate their account system and to make it user-friendly and intuitive.

stingray wrote:

2- smart phones as controllers.

Does anyone want this? With console games especially, you need the precision of pressing a button that is always a fixed-height versus the random height of hovering your finger over your screen...

I am fine with using it as an input for in-game chat though. I just wish Sony hadn't copied Facebook and split their main app and messaging app...

dewalist wrote:

Does anyone want this?

I do not want it. Just getting out the craziest prediction I can.
However, I bet some mobile gamers would go for it. Especially if it means they can play a four player game without buying three other controllers.

I also do not want more violence in games.

stingray wrote:
dewalist wrote:

Does anyone want this?

I do not want it. Just getting out the craziest prediction I can.
However, I bet some mobile gamers would go for it. Especially if it means they can play a four player game without buying three other controllers.

I also do not want more violence in games.

More importantly, I bet someone at a major publisher would be downright excited about the idea.

wordsmythe wrote:
stingray wrote:
dewalist wrote:

Does anyone want this?

I do not want it. Just getting out the craziest prediction I can.
However, I bet some mobile gamers would go for it. Especially if it means they can play a four player game without buying three other controllers.

I also do not want more violence in games.

More importantly, I bet someone at a major publisher would be downright excited about the idea.

That doesn't sound like how they get more money from you. The cheap plastic peripherals was that money pit and I think that era is long past. Unless it's an app you can buy to enhance your game, now that's an idea.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd love a remaster of Dragon's Dogma. I didn't get to it last gen.

Congratulations!
http://store.steampowered.com/ageche...

RolandofGilead wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd love a remaster of Dragon's Dogma. I didn't get to it last gen.

Congratulations!
http://store.steampowered.com/ageche...

So close! But, no.