Crazy E3 Predictions

E3 predictions: everyone is making them. Since I don't have any inside connections in the industry, all I can do is travel to various news sites and see what people who know the business are expecting to happen. But of course there's no value in recycling what a hundred other people have already said. So instead, I'm going to make some ridiculous predictions and see if any of them come close to panning out.

Nintendo

There will not be a new Mario, Zelda or Kid Icarus title announced. However, the Urban Champion franchise will be resurrected as Nintendo's attempt at a mature title, a la Madworld.

Mother 3 will still not be localized for North America, but Mother 4/Earthbound 2 will be announced for the Wii for Japan and North America.

Despite claims that they have no intention of bringing out new hardware at this time, Nintendo will tease a new iteration on the Wii, with HD output, a much larger internal harddrive and WiiSpeak capabilities built-in. It won't be available until at least holiday 2010.

Microsoft

Hoping to once again get ahead of the game, MS will announce their purchase of OnLive, accompanied by a retooling of the 360 (especially the dashboard) for optimal cloud computing.

Sony

There will be a PS3 price drop.

Other

SquareEnix, in their ongoing quest to milk their IPs for all they're worth, will announce a new King's Knight title for the PS3 and 360.

Capcom announces Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat, in association with whoever the hell ends up with that IP after the raiding of Midway's assets. Also, their mystery title will be an open-world Strider game.

Kojima's heavily teased new game will be the next entry in the Metal Gear franchise; however, it will entirely replace controls with quick time events, allowing the game to be one long cutscene.

It will be revealed that City of Heroes developer and recent Atari acquisition Cryptic Studios is working on a Gauntlet MMORPG.

And finally...

Activision will not announce any new iterations on existing IPs.