Seven months later, how accurate were our predictions for gaming in 2019?

On January 10, I decided to finally use several years of video games reporting to take a stab and paint a picture for the year ahead. Were my guesstimations bold? Yes. Were they brave? Absolutely! Were they mostly incorrect? …Hey look over there, someone just stole Boris Johnson’s face! Okay, so maybe my prediction of Brad dying after he gave into peer pressure and choked while eating a plate of hair was premature, but where I’m wrong I was also kind of right if you take what I said and applied opposite law to it! Right?

Here’s a look at what I thought was going to happen this year…and what has actually happened so far.

Prediction: PlayStation 5 teased

To be fair, this was an easy one. Saying that Sony would tease a PlayStation 5 this year was the equivalent of me predicting that a mop-headed buffoon and habitual liar would become the prime minister of Britain. Sony may have been persona non grata at E3 this year, but they’ve been leaving breadcrumbs behind with vague hints of the PS5 not only shortening load times with a next-gen solid state drive, but also a substantial upgrade to their PSVR system as well. Exciting times!

Developers are talking about it, the pricing is said to be attractive and the next console war is going to look as pretty as can be when Microsoft rolls out the Project Scarlett counter-offensive. I think I’m amped.

Prediction: Call of Duty to offer its Single-player as an optional extra

After the success of Blackout mode, it seemed to make sense to suggest that Activision was finally ready to start selling $60 tickets to Call of Duty’s multiplayer where players would be charged extra for stuff like weapon skins, maps and probably bullets if that one mad shareholder got his way with a system that shaved cents off of your budget facility on every round fired.

I couldn’t be more wrong if I tried, because not only is Call of Duty returning to its single-player roots, it may just be the most poignant campaign yet. You may be playing the role of the hero, but you’re not going to feel like one when you’re done if developer Infinity Ward has anything to say about it. At least the multiplayer is looking solid, especially with a neat new Gunfight mode that trades large-scale maps in for something that’s far more…intimate.

Prediction: Fortnite begins to lose traction

The Fortnite train simply won’t slow down! With plenty of competition present, people only having so many hours in the day to dedicate to a single game and its developers burning out, it looked like Fortnite would finally start to lose some steam this year. ENNHHHH! WRONG! Fortnite recorded around 10.8 million active players during its Marshmello concert event, while overall subscriptions (active or not) have risen to over 250 million accounts so far.

Prediction: Overwatch goes free to play

There’s still gold in them hills! Overwatch continues to be a live service blockbuster for Blizzard, with the premium-priced game still offering annual events, tweaks to the gameplay and introducing two new heroes this year so far: Baptiste and the completely-off-his-rocker mad scientist Sigma. Still strong and still making money, Blizzard’s clearly in no hurry to hop into the freemium pool of gaming.

Prediction: Bungie hands over Destiny to Activision

Hello, this is Barry Wronger, currently driving down the wrong side of a wrong-way street on Wrongsday. Mere hours after I published my original theory about how Bungie was going to take the Chinese money, dump Destiny and hightail it towards greener pastures and out came the news that the developer had bought their freedom and would soon be an independent studio.

A move that is so far painting a bright future for Bungie, as the next big Destiny chapter looks like a tense thrill ride that kicks off a new era in September. One where the base version of Destiny 2 will become available for free in a massive move to entice new players into the dark future where only a faint glimmer of light can provide hope.

Prediction: Nintendo reveals a beefier Switch

In a way, I was kind of right. Nintendo did reveal a new Switch console a few weeks ago, but it was anything but beefy. So basically I was completely right except I wasn’t.  The Nintendo Switch Lite will take everything that the original handheld console is great at, shrinks the magic and strips of a few features so that it can be cheaper. Meanwhile, the OG console is getting a battery upgrade, which is about as much meat as you can expect for the rest of 2019 when it comes to Nintendo hardware revisions. Click!

Prediction: Bethesda pulls the plug on Fallout 76

IT JUST WON’T DIE! Sure, Fallout 76 may be chundering along with a whole heap of new content that makes it more like an actual Fallout game, but Bethesda’s disastrous online experiment may be too big to fail in its current incarnation as more additions create more problems in the grand scheme of things. Fallout 76 may still be alive, but it’s basically the Eskom of video games.

Prediction: Rocksteady reveals a Justice League game

June 2019. It is E3 month, I’m wearing my “RELEASE TEH SNYDER KUT” T-shirt and I am dead certain that Rocksteady will finally show off their latest project that has been cooking in the oven for quite a while now. The show of shows arrives and…nothing. Not a peep from the legendary studio behind the Arkham games and honestly…I’m fine with that.

Having recently replayed Batman: Arkham Knight, my jaw is still on the floor regarding just how far ahead of the curve this masterpiece of Gotham vigilante action was. Whatever it is that Rocksteady are working on, I’ve got a feeling that it’ll be more than worth the wait.

Prediction: Metal Gear Rising 2: Revengeance Boogaloo announced

I’M STILL WAITING DAMMIT!

Last Updated: July 23, 2019