My 2009 Predictions Report Card: How bad is bad? - RaychelSnr's Blog

RaychelSnr's Blog

My 2009 Predictions Report Card: How bad is bad?

Posted on October 15, 2009 at 11:40 AM.

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If any of you guys remember, back in January I made a blog post listing my predictions for 2009 in Sports Gaming. I figured we'd go back and check on my progress to see how good...or bad I've done.

Either MLB '09: The Show, NBA 2K10 or NHL 10 will be huge disappointments this next year. The solid trio we could count on will be no more after this year. It depends what you mean by disappointment, but in all reality all three games were very solid once again. I'm batting .000 right now after one!
Both fighting games (UFC and Fight Night) will be contenders for game of the year. When I wrote about this, there was a lot of uncertainty about both games, but so far the fan reaction has been pretty good for both. I'll chalk this up as a pseudo win for my ego, although there are far better games than both on the market.
EA and Take Two will BOTH have bids to buy them out this year, one of them will actually do it. When I wrote this, there was a rumor going around that Disney might be interested in EA. With Disney buying Marvel, I have serious doubts they're going to go after EA as well. There was the defunct Microsoft rumor as well. This is looking less likely, rumors have been popping up off and on about Take Two being bought, but nothing is concrete.
Madden will finally get online franchise and NCAA will get a new feature we've all been clamoring for. In fact, one of these two games will actually be received favorably by the OS crowd this year, even the group that has sworn off EA Football. When I wrote this Online Franchise wasn't announced, so I get a W for that. But my prediction about NCAA was only half right. I was talking about Create-a-Team and Create-a-conference when I wrote this, but we got pretty terrible versions of both. And the anti-EA football crowd is still 95% anti EA football.
The Wii will get several really good sports games this year. So far so good. The Bigs 2, Tiger 10, Madden, Wii Sports Resort and Shaun White Snowboarding? This is a big W.
PC Sports Gaming will officially be called a dead platform, despite all of the modding communities keeping titles such as Madden alive (not to mention the text-simmers). All I'm hearing are crickets about PC Sports Gaming. I'd say it's hard to define when it's officially dead...but we're closer than we were in January.
Sports gamers will be very excited by at least one surprise game announcement for this year. EA Sports MMA is exciting to me at least, although I'm sure others don't share my enthusiasm. So far, I'd say this is probably a meh or a big L on my record, unless you are excited by an MMA game by EA.

So what about you? How do you feel the year has turned out so far for sports gaming against your expectations?

Comments

# 1 adayinthelife @ Oct 15

I'm pretty impressed with sports games this year. The Show is incredible, I haven't enjoyed a Madden this much since last gen and I'm finally back to owning both hockey titles in NHL 10 and 2k10.

The only real let down (if you could call it that) for me is that FNR4 got really boring, really fast. I'm not a huge boxing nut though so frankly I don't really care that much.

# 2 Shinyhubcaps @ Oct 15

Any chance of Skate 2 getting some credit in end-of-year sports voting? That is my favorite sports game of the year and since you made your predictions, but I'm not sure how big of a following it has.

Overall, pretty good stuff. Those that didn't come true will probably be true for next year.