At the beginning of last year, we made 10 bold predictions of events that were likely to happen during the 2014 year. Some of these were pretty crazy ideas, and some of them made a lot of business sense. Let’s go over them and see how well we fared and whether or not Michael Pachter should be giving up his job to us. (Kidding!)
Our first prediction was that The Legend of Zelda Wii U won’t be released this year. Bang on, we got that one right on the nose. We did see more information about the game at E3, including a short cutscene, though.
The second prediction was a Nintendo DS smartphone, courtesy of Zorpix. This one was a bit far-fetched and while it hasn’t come true, we’ve seen Nintendo make some interesting acquisitions in the mobile space over the past few years. Either way it’s not likely a Nintendo phone will happen soon, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t welcome a virtual console or some other app for smartphones.
Moving on, our third prediction was that the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem cross-over would slip into 2015. Ding, ding, ding! We have another winner. This title was originally announced in January of 2013, just after the Wii U launched. Since then, we haven’t heard a peep out of anyone about the game since the announcement. As predicted, 2014 focused more on Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros.
The fourth prediction was something of a gamble. We predicted a new Pokemon game for Wii U, but as you can see that hasn’t happened. However, it’s possible with the success of amiibo that this might be something Nintendo focuses on in the future, especially given how popular the franchise is. Pokken Fighters announced for arcades across Japan doesn’t count here since we predicted a Wii U release, but if that game ever does see a Wii U release, it’ll be a sort of half right, half wrong. So far we’re 2-2 in terms of correct predictions!
Both our fourth and fifth predictions didn’t ring true, which is a shame. We predicted that we’d see Animal Crossing for the Wii U announced and GameCube games making their way to the Wii U virtual console. We’ll continue to hold out for the GameCube games and hopefully Animal Crossing on Wii U will happen sooner rather than later.
Our other prediction that didn’t come true included Nintendo will release a virtual console subscription service like Netflix. This is perhaps too forward-thinking for Nintendo, because Sony has jumped on the idea with their PlayStation Now subscription. The pricing starts at $19.99 a month for that service and lets you stream PS3 games on your PS4, or several new TVs that were announced this week at CES. We’d love to see Nintendo adopt this model going forward, but we’re not sure if the infrastructure of the Wii U could support it.
We also expected Nintendo to release a new SKU, which sort of half came true. We didn’t get the 64GB model with a high-capacity battery already installed, but Nintendo did debut a new Mario Kart 8 bundle that included the game, racing wheel, and a 32GB Wii U. We’ll call this one half true.
Our final two predictions came down to two of the biggest Nintendo executives today. Our first was that Shigeru Miyamoto would reveal his new project. This one was a double whammy, because we got two reveals this year! Miyamoto revealed Project S.T.E.A.M for the Nintendo 3DS, but we also got a glimpse of Star Fox for the Wii U, which is supposed to be playable at this year’s E3. We’ll consider this one a real win.
Finally, with the terrible year that the Wii U had during 2013, we predicted that Satoru Iwata might step down or be asked to step down as CEO of Nintendo. That never happened, but Iwata significantly lowered his sales forecast for the Wii U into much more manageable numbers and the release of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. did tons to help bolster the Wii U during this holiday season. In short, the Wii U ship has been turned in the right direction, so it’s very unlikely Iwata will step down for anything other than health reasons.
So there you have it! We got some of these right and others were off base, but we’ll have a new set of predictions for 2015 going up later this week!
