After a couple of weeks of rest, The Warp Pipe is back with renewed vigour. We’ll be shuffling things around a bit this year to find the best fit; you’ll notice that the column will be a little shorter and perhaps less retrospective than it has been, but the point here is to both inform and entertain, and I hope to be doing a lot of that in the next 12 months.

To kick things off this year, I’ll be putting on my fortune teller’s hat and making predictions about what will happen in the video game industry in 2009.

A Look into the Future

The video game industry is a creature of habit – if you hang around it for long enough, you get an understanding of how it works, and perhaps even predict what it’s going to do next. Of course, sometimes it’ll pull something out of the bottom drawer and surprise everyone. As a little bit of a warm up exercise, and as an opportunity to poke fun at myself later this year, I thought I’d peer into my imaginary crystal ball and make bold statements and predictions about what will go down in 2009.

- The economy will be the scapegoat for everything, regardless of whether it is actually to blame. - There still won’t be an R rating for games by the end of the year. Michael Atkinson will continue to ignore facts and hard evidence and cling to hearsay, conjecture and anecdotal evidence as his justification for blocking discussion. - The IEEA and GDAA will pursue their 40% tax deduction with a lot more gusto, promoting the success of products such as de Blob and promises of overseas investment and new jobs while using the failure of bloated big budget epic Australia as ammunition against the film industry. - More consolidation will occur. Midway will finally die (and there will be vultures hanging around waiting for some of their nice IPs), Eidos will be bought (probably by Warner). Gearbox will be in trouble if Borderlands or Aliens bomb. Konami won’t release anything worth a damn and we’ll all wonder how they stay in business between Metal Gears. - We will finally see a significant drop in the price of the PlayStation 3. I cannot imagine Sony going into Christmas 2009 with a console that costs more than either $US299 or $AU499. I would expect to see the first price drop around Easter and another in September or October. - Under the continuing leadership of Phil Harrison and David Gardner, Atari will regain their relevance and rate as a top tier publisher once again, and gamers will begin to take them seriously. They won’t experience runaway success, but their line up will perform consistently, making 2009 their best year for a long time. - E3 2009 will be a major improvement over the 2007 and 2008 shows, but will still not be a return to the glory years. The main excuse put forward by publishers will be the economy. Most major announcements will continue to be made in May as though the original E3 still exists. - No matter what Nintendo does, their fan base will complain. The big 2009 title will be a new Zelda game (they usually come out 3 years apart), but it will be somewhat different. Wii Sports will take the mantle of all-time best-selling video game from Super Mario Bros., and its sequel will be the best-selling title of 2009. The Wii will set a record for the lowest aggregate metascore across its 2009 releases, thanks to a major hike in low budget shovelware. - Despite the best intentions of creator Tim Schafer, Brutal Legend will join Psychonauts and Grim Fandango as a critical success, but financial failure. - There will be some quiet rumblings about the next generation of home console hardware, but absolutely no official word. In fact, all three manufacturers will discuss their current systems having much longer life cycles than recent generations. You won’t be playing the next generation of consoles before 2012 (unless a fourth manufacturer gets in on the act). - If PSP hardware sales stay consistent, we won’t hear of new Sony handheld hardware this year. It’s risky because software sales on the PSP are non-existent, though Sony makes money on the hardware. If they can’t drum up more software support and sales, we might hear something concrete about a successor. The DS will continue to sell like hotcakes, even if the software continues to be as lousy as it was in 2008. I’d hope to see a sequel to New Super Mario Bros. or something else substantial, but I’m not holding my breath. - Street Fighter IV will set off resurgence in interest in the fighting game, bringing about what could be a new golden age of the fighting genre. Tekken 6 will ruin it. - Duke Nukem Forever won’t make it. I reckon we will see an actual gameplay trailer this year, not unlike what 3DRealms did with Prey a couple of years ago. - The decline of the music game genre will become even more obvious, and everyone will blame it on Activision’s oversaturation, while praising Harmonix’s platform-based approach. Rock Band 2 will take too long to come out in Australia, and bomb again. - Microsoft will still insist on chasing the casual dollar with an embarrassing E3 press conference demonstration, and fail miserably, when they don’t bother advertising the products. Again. - Killzone 2 will be bigger than the first game, but not a runaway success. Heavy Rain will correct the problems of Fahrenheit, but still rely too much on quick time events for critics’ liking. Sony’s Japanese division will finally pull their finger out and show some new games, teasing Fumito Ueda’s next game. - The popularity of digital download services will continue to rise, and all parties will devote more resources to their respective services. Steam will continue its rise as the de-facto standard of PC digital distribution. The tighter economy will see a drop in video game budgets, with more studios seeking out projects with lower risk. The amount of fresh content on digital download services will increase as a result. - World of Warcraft’s growth will continue unabated, reaching 13 million accounts. Other MMOs will not be so lucky, and there will be at least one high profile closure, which, if this week’s news is anything to go by, will probably be Age of Conan. - The Sims 3 will be the biggest new release of 2009 on the PC, but critics will complain that it’s not a big leap over The Sims 2. The add-on packs will come thick and fast as EA uses the franchise to keep its head above water and subsidise the development of better games (like Dead Space 2 *fingers crossed*). - Blizzard will keep fans in the dark for the vast majority of the year, but they will release a game, and it’ll probably be StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. - The holiday line up will still be oversaturated. Alan Wake, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Mass Effect 2, Halo 3: ODST, BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams, God of War III and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are just a few of the games that will most likely be hitting in time for the big spending season, and there’s more to be announced. When will they learn?	Frightfully oblivious
	Atari will find form
	2009’s biggest hit (probably)
	Street Fighter IV will bring fighting games back to the masses
	Just release a damn gameplay movie already
	If it’s not good, I’ll never hear the end of it
	Too many holiday games, yet again