2008 Year In Review

With 2008 coming to a close, and the video game industry expecting double diget growth, despite the recession around us, it is time to review the past twelve months and highlight some of the years big winners, big losers and big lessons.

BIG WINNERS

Wii Fit was one of the most innovative products of 2008. Nintendo took a big risk in developing a product that targeted both the casual and core gamers. That risk definitely paid off. Six months after its release, it is one of the hottest games out there.

Guitar Hero: On Tour was another title that beat the market's expectations. Activision managed to take the Guitar Hero franchise, shrink it, and implement it on the Nintendo DS.

Charming is a word oft used to describe LittleBigPlanet, Media Molecule’s debut game. This game brings together all types of gamers, even drawing in non-gamers to witness user-generated spectacle. LittleBigPlanet’s target audience is “people,” and it deserves recognition as one of the best games of the year.

2008 was a great year for brand new franchises including Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Grid and Pure. The proliferation of review aggregation sites such as Metacritic and GameRankings is making it easier for great new games to find their way to the top.

Other surprise hits include downloadable games such as Braid for Xbox Live and World of Goo for the Wii. The cult success of these games is proof that you don't need to make a blockbuster game to get in front of millions of eyeballs.

On the small screen, Nitro Kart 3D on the iPhone is a fantastic game. The sense of speed is excellent, the graphics are nearly as detail-packed and colorful as Super Monkey Ball, and it includes plenty of game modes and racers.

BIG LOSERS

One of the biggest disappointments of 2008 was Too Human. In development for almost 10 years, Too Human was hyped to be one of the defining releases of this console generation. With such high expectations, it was no surprise that many critics judged the game harshly; the general consensus among gamers was that the game play was highly repetitive and the story fell flat.

Iron Man is another game that failed to to live up to its potential. While it was a fantastic movie, the video game was one of those cash-in brand deals that reminds us all why ET ended up as landfill. Someone should have taken a tire iron to this iron man.

BIG LESSONS

Despite not being 100% recession-proof, the video game industry has proven this year that it is definitely recession-resistant. This is still a growth industry, and there are many outside players trying to figure out how they can get a piece of the proverbial pie.

PLATFORMS
The real battle in this console cycle is for second place. While the continued momentum for the Wii has certainly been impressive (2 million units in one month is quite a feat), Microsoft is making all the right moves to ensure that it holds a significant edge over Sony in the U.S. for the number two slot. In the face of a struggling economy, the Xbox team hit just the right tone in the marketplace by dropping the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade to $199. Sony, on the other hand, decided to stick with the same general price points while adding extra gigabytes to the hard drive. The DS remains mindbogglingly successful, with year-to-date sales up 15 percent over last year's thru November, 6 million units. Despite The PSP 1.5% year-over-year growth, this was that most disappointing platform on the market in 2008.

PUBLISHERS
As larger publishers begin to focus more and more on generating blockbuster hits, there is a growing contingent of independent developers with their eyes on a different kind of business model. For a fraction of the cost of developing a fully-loaded $60 game, independent developers can avoid the pitfalls of the traditional retail distribution model and reach gamers directly through the consoles' online services. While these two approaches could not be more fundamentally different, both will need to rely on the growing number of connected consoles in order to find success in 2009.

RELEASES DATES
Watch out for crowded release windows... There were a ton of games that were overlooked, that should have been more successful including Far Cry 2, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Saints Row 2, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, LittleBigPlanet, and Prince of Persia, all of which came out in a crowded holiday window. Many of these titles would have performed better if launched in January through August, and we may see publishers re-think release windows going forward.