My 2014 Gaming Predictions

To me, 2014 is the year of hope. All of the next gen consoles have been released. Several games have been announced for them. Now, we all wait in anticipation, hoping the games will be as good as the developers say they are. We spent a lot of money on these consoles. We want revolutionary games that will make that money worth it.

I have looked at the games that are expected to release in 2014 and made my predictions on the best in each genre. In general, I do not cover game genres that I do not play. However, this year there are several big games in other genres that have won awards in the past. I decided to add a Special Mentions section for these games. I am not experienced in those genres, but their franchise histories are enough to warrant possible contention for Game of the Year awards.

I make my predictions based on a combination of factors, such as the hype surrounding the game, the developer’s history of games released, the previous games in the series if it is a sequel, and what I personally think from the preview footage of the game. I generally weight full game releases higher than expansion packs. An expansion pack has to be perfect to beat a new full game. Unless the company has history of making superb expansion packs, I usually will not even include them in the list of contenders.

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My Gaming Prediction Results for 2013

It is time to look back and see how I did on my 2013 predictions. My results this year were a little better than last year. A couple of my picks for top games were correct. In the other genres, my 2nd or 3rd game in the list was usually the top game, but I my predictions were particularly bad in the Strategy genre. Some of this was because of games being delayed, but a few games did much better than I foresaw.

Action

Predicted Winner: BioShock Infinite
Actual Winner: BioShock Infinite

I think my prediction for BioShock Infinite was correct. While it did not live up to all the hype, it was still far better than the other action games released this year. The gameplay was seen as nothing new, but the story and world the developers created was praised. Many thought it may have been better as an adventure game or role-playing game with exploration being the focus instead of shooting. It did not have the longevity of other action games (no multiplayer), but most players had a lot of good to stay about it.

My order for the rest of the games was pretty far off though. Several games were not even announced when I made my prediction. Others turned out better than I expected. The next two games had to be Metro: Last Light and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Both games scored roughly equally high for different reasons. Metro: Last Light, which I did not think would release in 2013, was praised for its atmosphere and setting. If it had more polish it may have been a contender for best action game this year. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was praised for being a refreshing take on the Metal Gear world, while the developers of Metal Gear 5 get some time to make it a polished game.

Gears of War: Judgment, ARMA 3, and Crysis 3 all got average reviews. I kind of expected that with Gears of War: Judgment. The story was over with Gears of War 3. Judgment felt like a retread, with no new gameplay unlike Metal Gear Rising’s refreshing gameplay. I did not expect ARMA 3 and Crysis 3 to score so low though. ARMA 3 did not have enough content at launch to satisfy most players. Crysis 3 had a weak single player campaign, which was surprising given its pedigree.

I totally forgot about Dead Space 3 when I made my predictions, but it also had a flaw. Many of the horror elements were replaced with more action, causing the game to lose some of its identity. There was also controversy about the single player microtransactions, which felt like a cash grab to many players.

I wrote down Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the next game in the series ended up being Call of Duty: Ghosts. Players seem to finally be getting tired of Call of Duty, as its sales were lower than last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. I expected there to be slightly lower sales, but not such low review scores. Usually, the single player just gets a pass. Players have so much fun with the multiplayer they do not care about the campaign. This year they were tired with the campaign, and the multiplayer felt like the same old thing. Battlefield 4, which had not even been announced when I made my prediction, seemed to be a mirror copy of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Few people liked the campaign, so everything was dependent on the multiplayer, which was pretty much the same as Battlefield 3.

Aliens: Colonial Marines turned out exactly as I predicted. It was a licensed game. Licensed games are almost always bad. Aliens: Colonial Marines was a bad game. Sega was able to really hype up players while delaying the release of reviews to get pretty high sales numbers. Pretty soon disappointment stories from the players started appearing everywhere.

Predicting the Bottom for World of Warcraft Subscriber Numbers

It seemed inevitable, but World of Warcraft lost subscribers again. According to the latest Activision-Blizzard Conference call, the current subscriber count is now 7.7 million. That is a loss of 600,000 subscribers in three months. A lot of people, myself included, are wondering when the subscriber numbers are going to bottom out and how many subscribers the game will have then.

We know in the last update that WoW lost 1.3 million, bringing it down to 8.3 million subscribers. Now the loss is only 600,000, so about half the loss as before. If that pattern continues, the game will lose another 300,000 in the next three months. That gives us a sequence of 150,000 -> 75,000 -> 32,500 and so on. In a year’s time the game would have around 7.1 million subscribers. However, the next expansion will definitely raise subscribers for a few months after it releases.

I believe Blizzard will release the next expansion pack about 8 months after the last Mists of Pandaria content patch. The last Mists of Pandaria content patch is 5.4, but it has not released yet. It is on the test server though (since June). Judging by past history it will be about 2 months (August) until 5.4 is released on the live servers. Eight months later would put the expansion release in April 2014.

It is July 2013 now and the expansion will be out in April 2014 for a total of 9 months until the expansion’s release. In 9 months, the game will lose 300,000 + 150,000 + 75,000 for a total of 525,000 subscribers lost by the time the next expansion is out. That leaves around 7.2 million subscribers still subscribing. I believe the expansion will add 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers for a month or two. Then, the game will either stay flat around 7 million or start losing subscribers again.

I know there are still a lot of active players that love the game, but each expansion is probably going to bottom out further and further just a little bit. The current expectation is that the last expansion will be when characters can get to level 100. That is only two expansion packs. The next expansion pack in 2014 will bring subscribers down to 7 million. The following expansion pack in, I predict, 2016 will bring subscribers down to 6 million. Finally, in 2018 I predict a free-to-play mode will be added to the game, with the subscription option still available.

The Free-to-Play Crash

Free-to-play has been around for a while now in Asia but has only recently become popular in the West. I remember playing international versions of Asian MMOs in indefinite “beta” status on PC, with cash shops and all, way back in 2001. They were not technically free-to-play, and some of them did release eventually, but the ones that did not were basically free-to-play.

On the other hand, mainstream MMOs in the West still had the normal box fee + subscription model until Lord of the Rings Online switched over in 2010. On PS3, the first free-to-play title was Free Realms in 2011. Xbox 360 players had to wait until 2012 with Happy Wars. (Technically, there were some free promotional games released earlier.)

Free-to-play sounds great at first. We have all kinds of game options available to us now. They all use slightly different business models, so we get to pick and choose which game fits the best for our interests and budget. Later, it becomes a problem. We have only to look at the Apple App Store to see the results.

When it first came out, the App Store was revolutionary. Finally, indie developers could get their game seen by potential buyers just as much as the big publishers could. The earliest games were being priced around $5, $10, or $20. Unfortunately, the system got so popular that a small price drop was enough for a massive spike in sales. A massive price war ensued until the minimum price of $1 became the norm.

Now, everyone is switching to free-to-play. Some of them are still very successful, but it is becoming an extremely low profit margin business. A little bad luck or one small mistake is enough to bankrupt a game company. It has gotten so bad that many developers are abandoning the mobile games market for a PC-only approach such as Steam Greenlight.

This is a warning for free-to-play on the other platforms. On Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, game prices could easily tank because of the amount of competition. Worse, most free-to-play games try to attach their players by giving out rewards through time sinks. Not only is it hard to make a profit with a game given out for free, the players have a really hard time switching to try out a new game. A new game comes out and most players are sticking with the games they already have. That is a sure way to kill the market.

The market thrives on people buying and playing new games continually over time. The companies make money by continually selling new games. They can get by on microtransactions for a while, but ultimately, players will want new games. If too many players stop trying out new games, the free-to-play market will die. I see no way around it. In a few years, there will be so many free-to-play options but not enough players to go around. A bunch of those publishers and developers will go out of business with just a few left standing.

Now, I have predicted before a crash in digital distribution. That to me is more long term, the next 10-20 years maybe. The free-to-play crash is going to happen sooner. My guess is within 5 years. Most companies in this space are just barely getting by, and yet, numerous new companies with new free-to-play games are entering the field.

For MMOs, I expect there to be a small rebound back to subscription-based MMOs. There will be a more even balance between them. For the short, casual games free-to-play does not fit. They will all go back to upfront fees. There are some other genres to look at too, like the Dota-style games. There have been so many of these released recently and many more in the future. Only a few are going to be left standing, namely DOTA 2 and League of Legends.

My 2013 Gaming Predictions

It is time for this year’s predictions. The year 2013 represents “the last hurrah” of the seventh generation consoles. It looks to be one of the best years. I think I said that last year, but this year even more. A number of my predicted top games for last year were pushed into 2013. Then, there are all the games that were already planned for 2013 release. This year is stacked for big releases.

This post is a compilation of my predictions for the top games of the 2013 year. I have looked at the games that are expected to release in the coming year and made my predictions on the best in each genre. Last year, I made my predictions a little late, all the way in April. This year, I decided to make them in January.

As a rule, I do not cover game genres that I do not play, so I do not make predictions for the Racing, Sports, and Fighting genres. I also do not play handheld games; I make no predictions of 3DS and Vita or iOS/Android (smartphone/tablet) games.

I make my predictions based on a combination of factors. Mostly it is hype surrounding the game, but I also think about other factors such as the developer’s history of games, the previous games in the series if it is a sequel, and what I personally think from the preview footage of the game. I generally weight full game releases higher than expansion packs. An expansion pack has to be perfect to beat a new full game.

My Gaming Prediction Results for 2012

Last year I made a post laying out all my predictions for the 2012 year. I always like to look back and see how I did. Overall, my predictions for the winners were wrong, but my predictions for the runner-ups were usually pretty close.

Action

Predicted Winner: BioShock Infinite
Actual Winner: Halo 4 / Max Payne 3 (tie)

I predicted Bioshock Infinite would release in 2012 and win this category. Unfortunately, it was delayed for a second year. The next two games on my list were Halo 4 and Max Payne 3. I mentioned that Halo 4 was the conservative prediction under Bioshock with Max Payne 3 the possibility of stealing it. Well, both of those came true. Halo 4 scored better than Black Ops 2 and was generally considered the best Xbox 360 action game. On the other platforms, Max Payne 3 was the top action game.

The NPD Group will always be “irrelevant”

A popular story last week was a statement made by EA’s Labels president Frank Gibeau on the NPD Group’s sales tracking:

My point is it’s an irrelevant measure on the industry. It’s totally irrelevant. We don’t even really look at it internally anymore.

Statements like this have been pretty common over the years from both gamers and industry insiders alike. The game industry has changed since the year 2000. More and more people are buying games online instead of in stores. On top of that games have grown outside of the US and Japan. There is a massive games market in China. The European games market is now bigger than the US games market. Back in 2000, the NPD Group’s reports were capturing about 80% of the games market. These days they are only around 40% of the market. You could say 80% was representative of the market, but at 40%, that is no longer the case.

A lot of people are criticizing NPD Group for this. I mean how can they keep releasing reports and getting the media into a frenzy every month when their reports are not representative? Well, the NPD Group is not stupid. They know digital sales information is desired, and they want the information too. The problem is this information not available. I do not think it will ever be available. You see, there are not enough middlemen in digital sales.

In the retail sector, there are publishers and retailers but also shippers and manufacturers. If a publisher does not release retail sales data, the NPD Group can turn to the other three, the middlemen, to get a good picture of the overall sales. With digital sales there is no need for shippers and manufacturers. Consumers just download the games. Without that information, they really cannot do any analysis on digital sales.

Online there is the digital storefront middleman. Websites like Steam, Gamersgate, Green Man Gaming, and Good Old Games all exist as middlemen in between the publisher and the consumer. So far, however, they have been reluctant to release sales information. I believe this is because they do not want people to see how much money they are really making, lest the market become flooded with copycats and they make less money, but even further down the road, these middlemen will not exist either.

There is nothing stopping publishers from making their own digital storefront. Consumers can access their storefront just as easily as a middleman storefront. There is no place for the middleman in that situation. We already see this with EA’s Origin. For the most part EA games sold online are exclusive to Origin. You might be able to buy them on other websites, but you have to activate and play them through the Origin client. Eventually, all games will be exclusive to their respective publisher’s platform.

As you know publishers are big marketers. When a game sells well they are happy to make a big announcement on the success, but when a game sells poorly, you do not hear a peep from them. So NPD Group cannot get information from the middlemen right now. Even if they could get access to this data someday, it will not make a difference. Publishers will force those middlemen out of business eventually, and publishers will never release detailed sales data on all their games.

The NPD Group has no options here. They either continue what they are doing reporting retail sales only, or they abandon game sales tracking and focus on the other industries they analyze. I think retail sales do have their place though. Even if retail sales go down to 10% or 20% of the market, they can still show some trends in the industry. Just know that we will never have an accurate overall picture of the industry.