My unexpected and expected events for the year 2008

[mariozeldametroid]

My pick:

-At GDC 08 Gears of War 2 will be announced

-At E3 08 a new Zelda will be announced, the same way they announced TP in 2004

-Ubisoft will announce Assassin's Creed 2 and Prince of Persia 4 will be announced to be X360/PS3 exclusives, pissing many Nintendo-fans off. But they will soon turn, because Ubisoft will announce exclusivity of the Rayman franchise for Nintendo platforms(not only the RRR games, but the platformers as well.
But the thing N-fans will really be excited about is a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil, exclusive for Wii, with Michel Ancel as producer and Miyamoto for supervision.

-Valve will announce Half-Life 3: Episode 3 to launch at the end of 2008. It will get delayed, however.

-A sequel to Portal will be announced.

-A lot of main series sequels will be announced for Wii, but will not release until 2009/2010. The biggest among these will be the announcement of Final Fantasy XIV. It will still be released for PSN, but 1 year after the initial Wii launch.

-Half-Life 3 rumors will start. After the initial ''it will launch in 2009'' and ''it will uncover the Gman's secret'' rumors, one will pop up that it will release in 2016, on PC and Wii2 simultaniously. These rumors are only believed by some gamers, most of them believe Wii won't last until 2016 and it's successor won't be powerful enough to make HL3 possible.

-Surfer Girl turns out to be Hiroshi Yamauchi.

-Timesplitters 4 won't come. Instead, three completely new, independent games, all named ''Timsplitters 1.333'' will release for all three consoles.

-Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark and JetForce Gemini almost release for the Virtual Console, and Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 64 almost launch for XBLA. Right before launch, Rare and Microsoft back off, though. Rumors say it wasn't Rare or MS, but Hiroshi Yamauchi who stopped these developements, and stops an eventual ceasefire in the console war. Master Chief, on the other hand, will come to the successor of Brawl.

-Now Microsoft finally makes some profit of their games-division, they decide to plan a hostile takeover on Sony, as a whole. The first rumors of this event will appear in 2008, but it won't happen until 2020. When this happens, Microsoft looses so much money Nintendo passes them as biggest software company on earth.

-EA fuses with THQ to surpass Activison-Blizzard in size.

-Retro Studios' new game appears to be the long forgotten Raven Blade.

-When DSlite sales start to decline, a new edition of the DS is announced. It will launch in 2008 in Japan, but because they can't make enough of it, it won't be released in the US until december 2008 and Europe in may 2009.

-Nintendo will build enough production factories to increase Wii production to 4.3 million per month. This new production limit enables them to sell 1 million units per week worldwide throughout the year, but they won't achieve that until they start sending units to South Korea, China and increase shipments for the smaller European markets such as the Benelux, Spain, Italy, eastern European countries and Russia.

-2008 will be the year to shine for PS3. MGS4 will receive great scores, but is critisized on Gamespot for 'not being on Xbox 360' and is rewarded with a 5.5. This scandal almost costs Gamespot their lives and when the 360 version of the game releases one year later, with less features and on 3 DVD's, the last thing Gamespot does is rewarding the 360 version with a 9.5, just before CNET closes their Gamespot section.

-Other greatly received games are Killzone 2, getting some 10/10's but eventually ending up in the mid 80's; Resistance 2 getting blessing words such as 'a worthy sequel' and ending in the high 80's; Little BigPlanet for being 'the first truly spectacular platform game since Super Mario Galaxy'
All these games sell well except for LBP, which is barely downloaded and even sold less in stores.

-Super Smash Bros. Brawl will get hyped almost to death. When it finally launches in Japan only to be surpassed by some SE RPG's and a maybe two Mario games, with competition hardware sales being 0 at launch day.
In the United States it's even worse. Although it doesn't beat Halo 3's opening week, it will be the only game to come close for years.
Europe also has gigantic sales for the game.
It stays at the #1 spot in averga reviews for a while, but is eventually punched back to below #10 after a few bad reviews, including EDGE'S 6/10.

-GTA will dissappoint both critically and commercially, but will bosst Xbox 360 sales as many PS2-GTA fans cross over.

Phew... I'll leave it up to you guys to decide which guess is wild and which is not ;).