The year is over, and you can see our past predictions in 2010:
But how did we do, well . . .
Steve:
- Anime and Manga: Last Years Predictions: We were right about eManga but Skiff kind of faded away. Anime moved further online and Crunchyroll kept up its dominance. Japan (and Korea) have interests in the American market, but the cultivation of talent over here is slower than I expected.
- Media and Publishing: I was right about everyone moving online, conflicts over e-book formats, news companies innovating, and a slight increase of interest in self-publishing (if only making it easier). Legal issues didn't slow things down quite as much as I thought, though they did have some effects. I was wrong on Skiff, but e-Mags are marching forward. There was more acceptance of e-readers than I thought.
- Technology: Twitter did not get sold and is omnipresent, Desktops faded, Linux was more prominent, Smartphones and Netbooks did well. . The iPad was cheaper and though I was right on the focus, the success FAR outstripped my predictions. I also got eReader device consolidation long. There was no real lasting backlash against social media issues, though it did make the media.
- Video Games: The PS3 did good, Natal (now Kinect) was a hit but seems to be fading, DLC got bigger, we saw more older games, more tie-ins. I was wrong on the iPhone being the big game thing (it seems to be the iPad supplanted it). Gamestop did show some of the DLC strategy, but mostly it was their new stores that seemed prominent.
- The Economy: I got it right that things would be highly mediocre in the economy, but the rest of the world got worse than I predicted so people worried less about the US. I was right about politican grandstanding, and only semi-right on unemployment – it really has dropped off the radar at times. Can't say I did great here.
Bonnie:
2010: My predictions for 2010 were a mixed bag. I called that it would be the Year of the Tablet (though I had predicted that it would be the Android tabs, not the iPad, that really got the ball rolling), that Borders would release its own E-reader, that there would be a boom in 3-D movies and that Yahoo would continue to flounder. I also correctly predicted Google would release its own phone (even though the initial one was a flop), that mobile gaming would explode, that the Move and Kinect would debut in the last quarter and that Sony would finally make a PSP Phone. However, I was very, very wrong on several other fronts – I predicted the Keanu Reeves Cowboy Bebop film would happen; it crashed and burned. I felt that AOL would join Yahoo in going down like a sinking ship – instead, they’re on the verge of buying Yahoo. And I was wrong about Chrome becoming the dominant OS for netbooks – since it seems to be in stalled mode right now (and netbooks themselves have been eclipsed by tablets). All in all, though, I think I was kind of close!
2011: Making year-end predictions this year is not exactly going to be an easy thing. If the last 12 months have taught us anything, it’s that the only thing that’s predictable in the geekonomy is constant unpredictability. However, I’m going to give it a shot and unpack my crystal ball for 2011.
So there you have it. For the rest of this week I'll be running our predictions for 2011 . . . mixed in with a few other articles of course!