Well, I'm bad at guessing things but I'd immdiatly make the following guesses:
#1: Homefront:
To be honest this game looks pretty generic, and is already annoying the international audience who find it antagonistic, while at the same time being based around an improbably sequence of events while making pretensions of being realistic.
Decades ago if someone decided to do a similar game based on "Red Dawn" and featuring the Russians on US Soil, I think it would have gone over well. Right now I don't think we have the same kind of societal forces in effect, and while an invasion by North Korea is bloody unlikely, I think the very idea of a foreign threat of this type getting that kind of foothold is going to disturb even people who are politically correct.
I'm probably wrong about this because a lot of people do seem to be looking forward to it, but if I had to pick a much promoted game to fail this would be it.
#2: Deus Ex: Human Revolution: I pre-ordered this one and will be playing it, because I *REALLY* want it to succeed, but the expectations set by the orignal Deus Ex which people want a sequel to, combined with the expectations for things to be improved by modern technology have set a very high bar for this game that I can't see it reaching. It's one of those games that I desperatly want to succeed, but am expecting disappointment with. "Alpha Protocol" had many of the same goals and well... we all see what happened.
#3: The Sims: Medieval: This is another game I pre-ordered. I suspect that the very elements that got me to purchuse my first SIMS title ever are the same elements that are likely to turn the key user base against it. While so many things could go right with this, they have set such a delicate balancing act that as much as I REALLY want to see a success, I think it's likely to collapse under the weight of it's own design priorities.
#4 & #5: Bioware's big single player games:
The biggest "off chance" here are again two other games I'll be spending money on (bit the bullet and pre-ordered Dragon Age 2 to give it a shot, will probably do the same with Mass Effect 3 despite everything unless DA2 sets new records for blowing chips). Both "Mass Effect 3" and "Dragon Age 2" are examples of series where Bioware started with strong initial chapters but then decided to make a number of radical design changes, even after asking the fan base and getting a negative response. These are the lowest in my list because I think Inertia has a chance of carrying them, unlike the above games. How much of the RPG fan base Bioware lost with "Mass Effect 2" remains to be seen, especially if they keep to that design philsophy (ie customizable shooter with lots of dialogue and cut scenes), I honestly think the whole lack of serious character customization/multiple origins is going to hurt Dragon Age, though how much I do not know. A lot depends on them selling "Hawke" and I'll be honest in saying that I'll be a bit surprised if this doesn't leave them clamouring to restore character creation for the third game if they get one.
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I do NOT consider Bioware's "Old Republic" to be that big a risk. Really the worst that is liable to happen with it, is that it will fail to crash through "World Of Warcraft" like a juggernaut to take the #1 seat. With all the elements in line here, it's virtually guaranteed to sell enough copies to be at least a moderate success, so I doubt that even with it's budget that it's going to lose money. It's Bioware, it's Star Wars, it's Knights Of The Old Republic.... yeah okay, it has a huge built in trial audience. I'll be shocked if it doesn't move millions of units on the first day to be honest.
Besides, this game has apparently had 300+ million dollars spent on it, with a tight fisted company that would have cut it off if there was a real problem. On top of this EA has other MMO developers, and even according to "EA Louse" at his worse, the innuendo was that veteran designers were being moved onto the project to help shore up the problems Bioware may or may not have caused. The point is that the huge budget, and safety nets, as well as all the eyes that have probably been on this project due to the funding from the beginning (instead of just ignoring it until it was all spent, which would be stupid), make it a virtual guarantee that it will be a quality offering. There are always dark rumors about MMORPGS before release, WoW had those too.
The big question comes down to degrees of success. People are nervous about it this close to release (as anyone is with bold proclaimations) but the bottom like is that World Of Warcraft is an aging game, having been on the market for six years. No other game going against it before had the same kind of budget, developer quality, and free hand with development time that we've seen here. Simply put nobody even tried to create the "perfect storm" that created "World Of Warcraft" to begin with. Those game developers who claimed they were developing on a similar level, were inevitably proven to be liars (Age Of Conan comes to mind), this does not seem to be the case here.
So really, I don't think anyone should be predicting any kind of epic failure here (despite it being popular due to pessimism). Rather I think people should be more wondering on whether it will become #1 or merely a success. Honestly, the thing that makes me think it's going to be a juggernaut is largely that Blizzard has announced a new MMO project, which leads me to believe that they are tryig to move a step ahead, themselves predicting that WoW is about to take it's lumps even though I doubt it will be "killed" by any means. They are getting ready to launch the next-next-gen MMO to hopefully return the favor to Star Wars, or so it seems.
Of course I'm horrible at making predictions, and probably every game I say has a chance of failure will succeed big time (which is good I guess given how I'm spending my money), and "Old Republic" will become the most legendary gaming failure in history, if it even launches this year.
