At the very beginning of the year, we made some bold predictions about the state of PS3 in 2008. Let's see how well those turned out for us, shall we?
Looks like we were right about this one. In fact, Warner Bros. went Blu-ray exclusive just days after we made this prediction. We were a bit wrong in assuming that the HD format war would continue in 2008. We're glad to be wrong about that one.
We were right about this one, especially the part about a new color being bundled with Metal Gear Solid 4. It didn't take long before the "Limited Edition" systems were on eBay. We also stated that "America may introduce a new premium bundle in White that includes an even larger hard drive and a hotly anticipated game." We were wrong about the White color, but we got the premium bundle correct: an Uncharted bundle was released late this year with a 160GB hard drive.
Three in a row? Nice! At E3, Sony announced plans for a video rental service, which is now available in Japan and America. We were slightly off in thinking Sony wouldn't offer fully downloadable movies, thinking "Sony won't want to cannibalize its own Blu-ray sales." The video rental service doesn't offer HD downloads, but SD movies can be purchased and even transfered over to the PSP.
Looks like we were wrong about this. Damn you, Sony! If it weren't for this, we'd be 100% right ...
"In spite of a much better library of games in 2008, the PS3 will trail behind Microsoft's competing system." Unfortunately, we were right about this one too. PS3 dominated sales for much of the year. However, a holiday season price cut from Microsoft drastically shifted the advantage to Microsoft's court. Ads have been running on TV saying the Xbox is only $199 -- that's half the price of the cheapest PS3! Our prediction did look towards 2009 in quite a favorable way: "Momentum will certainly help PS3, and critics and analysts alike will predict even better things for 2009." We still believe that 2009 will be even better for PS3.
Overall, it looks like our crystal ball continues its high success rate. We'll be brainstorming up some more predictions for 2009 shortly. Until then, feel free to read the comments from last year's predictions thread. It's surreal reading comments from a year ago!
