Geek News Predictions for 2022

Happy New Year, everyone! I can’t believe we’re already two years into a decade that kicked off way too eventfully. We’re still knee-deep in a global pandemic despite vaccines being created in record-breaking time. It’s hard to believe 2022 will be much better than the last two years, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

While we’re on the subject of getting it wrong, as per tradition I’ll be making a few predictions regarding news and geek news for the year. On December 31st, 2022, I’ll be revisiting my predictions to see what I got right and wrong. Feel free to check out how I did with my 2021 predictions.

 

Democracy continues to backslide

January 2021 started off in a bad way, as the US presidential election continued to be in dispute, despite Joe Biden being the clear winner. Then the insurrection on January 6th took place in a last minute effort to keep the former President in power. Since then a large segment of the Republican party has downplayed the violence on January 6th while still maintaining the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Additionally, his supporters have taken to running for various political offices to help ensure election outcomes favorable to them. New voting restriction laws have also been passed in various states. I predict the November mid-term elections will put the Republican party back into power. We will continue to see American democracy erode as they try to convince large swaths of voters that authoritarianism and a roll back of freedoms is the only way to say safe and prosperous.

 

The Steam Deck gets delayed by three months up to a year

The Steam Deck is set to launch in February as Valve is confident there won’t be any delays. I predict otherwise. Given the continued chip shortages along with high demand from a variety of sectors, Valve will be forced to push back the launch of the Steam Deck by a few months. At best those from the first group of pre-orders will see their handhelds by the summer, while those in later groups will have to wait much longer. I’m confident this will happen given how Nintendo had to lower expectations on Switch sales for 2022. Even Analogue has expected deliveries for its Pocket to extend well into 2023. It’s difficult to believe Valve will be immune to these issues.

 

Next gen console shortages continue through 2022

While we’re on the subject of consoles, I predict things won’t be much better for this console generation in terms of shortages. As I stated above, the Switch is the best selling system on the market at the moment. Nintendo expects shortages to impact sales. Sony and Microsoft are having a difficult time getting their consoles to consumers who want them. The chip shortage isn’t easing any time soon because the pandemic is still in control of this economy. Worker shortages and lockdowns affecting manufacturers are still a problem worldwide. The PS5 and the Xbox Series X will be difficult to obtain all throughout 2022 and signs for early 2023 won’t look much better.

 

Final Fantasy XVI delayed until 2023 or 2024

Square Enix recently announced that development on Final Fantasy XVI has been delayed by six months because of the ongoing pandemic. The next major bit of news regarding the JRPG won’t be shared until sometime in spring 2022. Working remotely because of COVID-19 precautions hasn’t been easy on game development and we don’t know how far along FFXVI was before this announcement. I predict that the next numbered Final Fantasy will be delayed until late 2023 or early 2024. Game updates and other releases will trickle out to keep Square fans happy, but there’s no way we see this game before 2023.

 

The NFT craze won’t go away

NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens have been around for years, but earlier this year they grew dramatically in popularity. People took notice when Chris Torres sold an NFT of Nyan Cat for $590,000 and Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple sold a collage NFT for $69 million. Since then Ethereum (a competitor to Bitcoin used for NFT transactions) has gone up in price, catching the eye of crytocurrency enthusiasts. One of the basic promises is to make digital goods more rare, valuable, and unique by recording their sales and proof of ownership to the blockchain. Unfortunately, these transactions are a determent to the environment and are trying to solve problems that already have solutions. Worse yet, art theft has become rampant as would be sellers have taken to minting NFTs from art they don’t own the rights to. That hasn’t stopped many corporations from seeing dollar signs. As polarizing as NFTs are, I predict they won’t be going away anytime soon in 2022. Look forward to seeing options to buy or invest in them on numerous social media platforms, in various payment apps, and especially in video games.

 

With my predictions out of the way, I’ll be back in about a year to see how well or poorly I did. Given how cynical I am this year, I don’t think I mind getting too much wrong.