I’m bored right now, so I’ll talk about something that we’ll be waiting another month for: E3. While it really is a shade of it’s former self, E3 is still the one of the best times of the year in terms of big video game-related news. I’m just gonna throw out some key bullet points of things I want to see from the 15th of July to the 17th of July.

  • I expect to see Microsoft and Sony up the ante in terms of their XBL/PSN offerings. What I mean by this is that they should be announcing some big time upgrades in terms of types of content offered (bigger and longer XBLA games from Microsoft, movie and music download service from Sony), and some big announcements about Sony’s Home and some cool Home-like things from Microsoft as well (along the lines of their recent survey leaks). Also, a pipe dream of mine is that Sony will announce that they’ve figured out how to speed up download speeds for anything on the PSN. If you compare similarly sized files downloaded on the PSN and XBL, XBL is far superior. As a side note to that, I would like to see Sony announce that content will be going up on the PSN throughout each week, instead of forcing us to wait for one big update every week.
  • I would LIKE to see Nintendo recommit themselves to the core gamer with some big game announcements, but I honestly don’t see it happening. I think we might see something about their new Kid Icarus game or a new Kirby, but besides that…Wii Sports 2: More Sports for the Wii Fit Board! edition wouldn’t shock me. And an external storage solution? Don’t hold your breath. They’re likely just starting to look into that.
  • CliffyB is probably going to be seen demoing a battle of some sort in Gears 2, but I would really like to see him demo their improved online multiplayer in Gears 2. That may be what I’m looking forward to most this November.
  • I want to be blown away by Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. I want to learn something about this game that makes me thing that it is one of the 360’s killer apps. I expect that, if anything, there might be some cool multiplayer info that we haven’t heard about yet.
  • I expect Insomniac to show off some of the early work they are doing on their planned revamping of myresistance.net, and help us to see how they plan on making it a social networking website.
  • I expect Square-Enix to announce a new RPG that will be PS3 exclusive. They owe it to Sony, considering all the good stuff they’re bringing to the Xbox 360.
  • A new handheld announcement from Nintendo. I feel that Sony will wait a year longer before rolling out a PSP 2 of some sort, but Nintendo is due for a new version of the DS. Yes, that’s right, I don’t expect a new Nintendo handheld, just another revamped DS. DS Liter, if you will. I would expect it to have internal flash memory or a port for an SD card, in order to hold game demos downloaded from the Wii.
  • Speaking of the Wii, expect to see some snazzy new colors for the console, controllers, and attachments. Gotta roll out that Hot Pink Wii to tap into the ten year old girl market, right? :P
  • I expect a surprise announcement about Alan Wake from the Microsoft camp, and it won’t be as far off as we all thought it was. I feel like it really depends on when Capcom plans on rolling out Resident Evil 5. If RE5 gets a Q1 2009 release date, Microsoft will push Alan Wake into the summer of 2009, but if Capcom goes later than Q1 ‘09 with RE5, Alan Wake may just get a release date of Q1 2009.
  • Speaking of big games that suddenly went quiet, Microsoft will turn E3 into a showcase for Halo Wars. I feel like we’ll get to see a good amount of what the game offers, and a solid release window. I don’t think we’ll get our hands on Halo Wars until next year, unfortunately. Microsoft just doesn’t need to push it out, considering all of their other triple-A games coming this Fall.
  • To get back to some more PSN issues, I expect updates 2.40-the one with in game XMB and Trophy support-to hit by E3. Gotta drum up interest somehow!

That’s all I have for now, I’ll probably revisit the subject at some point before E3, but for now, I think those are some believable enough E3 predictions.