Looking Back on Looking Forward to 2019

Okay, after checking my score I can safely follow up the prediction gif with:

Sony will not announce the PlayStation 5 this year.

Not only did they announce it, but you can own one before this time next year. I get why Microsoft is in a rush for starting over Wii U-style from their Xbox One, but Sony could have kept riding on the Playstation 4, financially speaking. I suppose Sony wanted to make sure they have the chance to bury Microsoft at the starting line again this cycle.

Nintendo will not announce any more Wii U remakes for the Switch.

Nintendo via a direct announced Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore… but nothing else. I was so almost right on this one, but I’m honestly OK with it going wrong in this particular way. I can take one for the team!

Amazon will face increasing scrutiny similar to what Facebook saw in 2018… but not from the government.

The news media has been especially unkind to Amazon, but nobody else seems to care. It’s enough to count.

The miniconsole market isn’t dead, but it will hibernate for the holiday season in 2019 (unless that’s when the aforementioned AtGames Sega thing hits).

The Sega came out well before the holiday season and the PC Engine mini will be here well after it, so this is the first win on this year’s board.

Somebody other than perennial favorite Connor McDavid will capture the NHL scoring title this season.

Nikita Kucherov scored 41 goals and 87 assists to help the Tampa Bay Lightning to an all-time-record-tying 62 wins in the regular season and 4 losses in the postseason.

Something is going to be horribly wrong with next year’s reimagined MacPro. There’s going to be a tremendous design flaw (other than the price) that is going to render it completely unsuitable for its intended audience.

We’ve had less than a month with this thing. We’re going to need more time for flaws to become apparent.

Valve will temporarily get tired of selling other people’s games and release one of their own this year. It will not be Half-Life.

I’m not sure how this went wrong. Valve DID announce a new game this year which was a VR game… in the Half-Life series. I intended to write Half-Life 3 in the prediction, but sadly, my lack of copyediting cost me dearly.

There will be at least one billion-dollar movie (global box office; probably Avengers), but the all-time record will not be broken anew this year.

There were, in fact, eight. Seven of which were owned by Disney. Avengers did top the list, but it also broke the all-time record.

One of the announced Smash Bros. fighters will be from the new Fire Emblem game.

After Piranha Plant, they’ve all been third-party. Perhaps they may yet do the obvious current-gen Fire Emblem and Pokemon adds now that the DLC fighters will continue until the team needs to start Smash 6 on whatever replaces the Switch in 5 years.

The Space Force will get canceled again.

Apparently this proceeded from a false assumption; the Space Force was getting kicked around rather than getting canceled and uncanceled repeatedly. But it was in the end of year budget bill, so either way, it’s really for real now.

This year’s record: 3-6-1 (.350)

Overall: 38-35-7 (.518)