22 Gaming Predictions for 2022

I didn’t do predictions last year because *waves arms around* everything that happened, so instead of wasting my time or energy on this godforsaken year, let’s just turn to 2022 to solve all of our problems! And to play actual games that come out instead of waiting for things to be pushed back indefinitely, like Ghost Wire Tokyo and Deathloop and whatever else was supposed to come out this year.

So here are 22 predictions divided up into how hot the takes are, using Taco Bell’s sauces as a guide to the level of intensity.

MILD TAKES

1. 2022 is going to be the year Microsoft finally gets some god damned games released! Who wants to see some Hellblade II gameplay? I do! How about a new Forza? Sign me up. Fable? Maybe too ambitious for 2022, but Starfield and maybe even Alan Wake 2 happen. And how about a Crimson Skies reboot already, Jesus Christ that is such a no-brainer. Oh and I’m sure Gears 6 or Gears Tactics 2 tag along as well.

2. The itch to hold conventions is so irritating for corporations right now, they’re scratching and clawing for ways to get back to normal. That’s still not going to happen any time soon, so the fact that we’re getting a digital E3 this year is a blessing. Last year’s mess of gaming press conferences was awful, nothing big was unveiled, and it was a hodgepodge of companies thinking their collection of trailers were the shit. No one had any announcements that were the talk of the town, there was nothing memorable from Microsoft, Nintendo took months between their Directs and had mostly nothing to say or show, and games were being delayed left and right. I expect E3 2022 to be tepid at best as the first big in-person event happening in the gaming world, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up for a return to normalcy in the way we used to have it, those days are over.

3. I have no earthly idea of what the hell Nintendo is thinking or doing at any given point in time, and if anyone outside of that company thinks they know better is an idiot and a liar. They’re a giant bumbling elephant that makes its own choices, damned of any logic or consequences, and it doesn’t care what anybody says because it prints money and still makes the best games on the planet. However, reading the tea leaves, the semiconductor and microprocessor chip shortage going on is going to impact every tech company from Apple all the way down the totem pole, so don’t expect to see Breath of the Wild 2 coming in 2021 because it’ll run on the Switch Pro and that is getting pushed. Production on computers, graphics cards, tablets, phones, and consoles are going to be affected heavily, so I wouldn’t bet on seeing a major push from anyone, especially Nintendo, on a new Switch iteration.

4. I really thought Overwatch 2 would be coming out in 2021. There’s no real reason it’s not, the game seems to be glorified DLC for the first one! An expansion to a game released in 2016 should not take this much time, it’s just more missions and characters and maps; charging $60 for that is criminal. But the reason for the push to 2022 has to be tied to the fact that Blizzard wants all of its IP to be on mobile (because that’s where most of the money in video games comes from now) and I expect Overwatch 2 to coincide with a mobile version to get all those sweet microtransactions from loot boxes. Can’t sell a console in the biggest market for games? Just put things on phones, the Chinese government allows its citizens to play those still.

5. If you thought live service game debacles were over and the gaming industry would learn any lessons from its own mistakes, you have not been paying attention to, well, history. There’s going to be another gigantic fiasco on the level of Avengers/Anthem/Outriders/Battleborn/Battlefront II coming so if I had to put my money on the next AAA game to implode at launch, it’s Warner Bros. and Gotham Knights. Just a hunch, but so far, it’s close to impossible for anyone to release a live game without some shit show happening, whether it be servers crashing or bad review scores or manipulative microtransactions and loot boxes being legalized gambling for children.

6. CD Projekt Red needs to stay quiet for at least another year or so after they basically chose short-term greed over quality, prestige, goodwill, customer trust, optics, and long-term financial security. They lost control of their expectations, lost responsibility, lost accountability, and lost the benefit of the doubt. They should keep their PR mouths shut, stay out of the news, quietly patch Cyberpunk, and just work on Witcher stuff until that studio heals itself from crunching to death. I imagine 2077 gets left in the dust but its spin-offs sure won’t, as the Netflix anime, tabletop game, merch, and other Cyberpunk projects will come fast and furious over the next few years. They put all their eggs into one Keanu-shaped basket, and now we have to live in their Cyberpunk universe for some time to come.

7. In 2020, delays left the GOTY field wide open for (the incredibly overrated and disappointing) The Last of Us Part II to dominate. And then out of nowhere WHAM Hades lights up the awards circuit. So since 2021 will also be a year of legendary delays due to COVID, I think the 2022 GOTY field boils down to these titles: God of War 2, Elden Ring, Suicide Squad, Forspoken, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Overwatch 2, Hollow Knight Silksong, Breath of the Wild 2, Ken Levine’s new game, and Hellblade II. Oh also we’re getting a GTA VI reveal, a Bioshock 4 reveal, a Silent Hill reveal, and get oh so closer to Diablo IV, Final Fantasy XVI, Avowed, Elder Scrolls VI.

HOT TAKES

8. The next four predictions are all Sony ones, so hold onto your hat folks. I think another big acquisition happens since they’re no longer funding Japan Studio, so while Deep Silver, Platinum, Capcom, and even Sega might be looked at, Bluepoint gets bought for more PS exclusive remakes and maybe a new IP. LOL never mind that won’t happen, this is Sony, they should have stopped making new IP after Haze.

9. Sony is also committing to PSVR 2 in a big way, and to cement its unique victory over Nintendo and Microsoft in VR, they get Half-Life Alyx as an exclusive for its launch.

10. Jim Ryan might be an old man who is wrong about most things, but he’s very good at making money. And the writing is on the wall for PlayStation to get its own Game Pass competitor, even though it already has PS Now. Which is just a significantly worse version of Game Pass since you can’t download most of the games in the catalogue and have to stream them over your shitty NA internet connection. I think they’ll appease some of us with more backwards compatibility to strengthen PS Now, and make more of the games downloadable, maybe tie it into your PS+ subscription, and throw some marketing budget around to prove they’re in it to win it.

11. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. And for some reason, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan keeps lighting fires like an arsonist with too much gasoline. Sony’s corporately mandated strategy going forward is unquestionably set in stone now: the video game division is the only real money maker, Sony Pictures needs to pick that shit up, and they’ll use the goodwill of its internal studios to leverage the other to succeed. There’s undoubtedly going to be a new Uncharted game that will appear alongside the Tom Holland film, as well as that pesky and ill-advised Last of Us remake to hit at the same time as the HBO show. Hell, remake it with Pedro Pascal IN THE GAME. Why not! Just piss all over the legacy that Naughty Dog built, who cares! Profits profits profits! No time for new ideas or adapting anything else. Ratchet & Clank did gangbusters at the box office, right? Wait what

12. Bungie has to move on from Destiny eventually, since most of gaming moved on from it too. While I’m not bold enough to predict Bungie gets bought by another publisher, I will go out on a limb and say the studio reveals Matter in an official capacity, which makes me interested in a Bungie game for the first time since Reach came out more than a decade ago. God I’m so old; I just turned 30 and my life is already over.

FIRE TAKES

13. Corporate synergy is a hell of a drug. So is cocaine, I hear. But as the leading face of the Xbox brand, Master Chief still has a big part to play in Microsoft’s future. It might not be 2004 or 2007 levels of big for Halo, but I cannot see Phil Spencer giving up on 343 and the franchise that kept the Xbox alive for those early years. I smell a Halo battle royale, as well as a new spin-off series that isn’t a first-person shooter, from another studio entirely. There’s going to be a lot of Halo things being shown off as Halo Infinite carries the flag for traditional Halo action, and all of this will be centered around the Showtime show that is already in the can. I think they shot the first season, so they’ll want to rally around that premiere with lots of announcements and long-term commitments to Mister Chief himself. Should Microsoft be pushing in all of their Halo chips? No. Should 343 continue to denigrate the once great series? Also no. Will they push on anyways despite my reservations of diminishing returns? Yes.

14. There’s a real theme with these predictions, you might have noticed, that game releases are going to be concentrated around big TV and movie launches (there’s another one right after this, too, spoilers). I think the dam has broken on video game adaptations ever since Detective Pikachu and the Sonic movie were…..not awful, and did quite well. Hell, Mortal Kombat is getting rebooted! So here’s another shot in the dark: there will be a brand new Sonic game that coincides with the release of Sonic 2 around April 2022, and a new Pokemon game that features Detective Pikachu because they’ll make another movie revolving around Poke battles and new trainers.

15. There is no Bloodborne 60 frame patch coming for the PS5, and there never will be. Sorry idiots, if it didn’t happen by now, it’s not going to. Sequel? Please, under Jim Ryan’s iron fist the only games released for the PlayStation going forward will be constant re-imaginings of The Last of Us 1 for eternity. Sony hates good ideas, they are allergic to them, and they will tell From Software to fuck off and walk backward into hell while giving them the double bird.

16. Sora gets the Smash Bros. invitation. Or Crash. Or Spyro. Or Waluigi. Or whomever the internet continues to predict but we ultimately get anime Fire Emblem sword characters.

17. The pandemy, as the youths say online, is having an immensely negative effect on the development of almost every major AAA game. Despite the influx of extra cash from everyone stuck in their homes with more downtime than they know what to do with, there is going to be a multi-year wave of delays and cancellations behind the scenes that we’ll only know the scope of a decade from now in a tell-all Jason Schreier book. Projects in long term development hell are going to be axed (or already have been) and I suspect more than one of these is on the chopping block for good: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Dead Island 2, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2, Skull & Bones, Wild, and/or Metroid Prime 4. Bayonetta 3 will come out someday, though.

18. Sony Bend is in quite the pickle. It wanted to do Days Gone 2, a game that was surprisingly decent for what it was. It will not do that. It was allegedly told to do an Uncharted game, but it will not do that either. It might be doing a new IP, but I have a feeling two new IPs in a row for a studio that is on Sony’s short leash is not going to be in the cards. While I want a reboot/remaster/remake of the Ape Escape games, I think we might be getting a Syphon Filter reboot to combat the Perfect Dark game Microsoft is cooking up.

DIABLO TAKES

19. Remember the Year of Luigi? I think after the 35th anniversary of Mario, and Zelda, 2022 gets its own cool yearlong celebration/de-listing of digital games to juice physical sales on the secondhand market. Metroid anniversary? Please, Nintendo killed that franchise and buried it alongside Starfox and F-Zero. No, they’ll make it the Year of Wario, and give us a free Warioware 99 game in the same vein as Tetris, Super Mario, and Pac-Man. Get ready for a lot of #Waaa on Twitter if this happens.

20. Unionization has to come to the industry sooner or later, if we plan on keeping people alive and the industry afloat. I have a feeling that meetings are being held in secret, and a big studio dips a toe into unionizing as Hollywood does with the WGA, DGA, and PGA. Although the dam bursting will cause ripples across the other publishers to invoke their godlike powers to squash all unions. The ensuing fiascos will enflame the industry, like the sexual abuse scandals did, and have us all asking if the current way games are staffed and created is no longer feasible without crunching people to death. I’m shocked no one has died of exhaustion yet.

21. Enough will all the DLC, the spin-offs, cameo appearances in indies and AAA games. We need a proper sequel and we’ll hear word of it soon god damnit! Shovel Knight 2 does 16-bit graphics this time around, and it might have playable co-op with Shield Knight. Just a wish, not a prediction, that last part.

22. To satiate the fans, to make some extra money of course, and to obfuscate from all the delays on their big games, Nintendo will reveal the inevitable: the N64 classic is real and it is spectacular. Four-player multiplayer sessions of Smash Bros., Mario Kart 64, and Mario Party 2 will greet us all once we’re fully vaccinated. And of course, it’s gotta include Paper Mario, Ocarina/Majora, Star Fox 64, Donkey Kong 64, and Pokemon Snap. Maybe not Banjo because Microsoft owns them, most likely not Goldeneye, but we live under capitalism not hedonism.

BONUS VERDE SAUCE PREDICTION

– Democrats lose the house because they’re stupid and corrupt. Just dumber than dogshit at doing anything competently. Old school politicians are still addicted to the following: receiving corporate money, not doing anything for anyone who doesn’t have corporate money, getting a boner for bipartisanship, not expanding the supreme court, not ending the filibuster, not adding more states to the union, not eliminating the senate, not ending gerrymandering, and loving centrism at the detriment to all of humanity and civilization. Those spineless moronic cowards will cease to stop an influx of brainwashed Nazis from winning as many seats as possible, losing state legislatures and governorships, and just kind of giving up on good ideas that poll well despite the ticking clock on the next pandemic or major global climate catastrophe. But hey, at least card-carrying Democratic leadership are old as shit and hate progressive politics more than anything else! Maybe they’ll all die soon, who can say.