My prediction for the biggest news story of 2008 will be the 'restructuring' of Take Two ...
Of all third party publishers on the market Take Two has bet the most heavily on the HD consoles over the Wii (and the PSP over the Nintendo DS), and (with a couple of exceptions) has not seen the return on their investments. This has put Take Two in the unfortunate situation where Grand Theft Auto 4 has to be the best selling Grand Theft Auto ever in order to match their current revenue projections ...
Grand Theft Auto 4 is going to be released, and be one of the best selling games of the year, but it will be one of the worst selling GTA games to date because there are far less console owners to buy it and the systems are far more expensive to buy than when previous GTA games were released. These lower than expected sales will mean that Take Two will be tens (or possibly hundreds) of millions of dollars in the red and they will need to increase cash-flow in order to continue development.
Most of what Take Two owns are shitty developers and shitty IPs and the only things they can sell are the few key developers that people know and love; these developers will likely get picked up by EA, Ubisoft, Activision or another large platform agnostic developer.
How this will impact the "biggest new title announced in 2008" is that it is very likely after this purchase is made you could see a Grand Theft Auto: Stories, Bioshock: Spinoff or another large IP being announced for the Wii.
