Shack Chat: What is your video game prediction for 2024?

The start of a new year means only one thing for Shack Chat. It's time to guess the year ahead. The Shacknews staff is ready to go ham with our predictions for 2024. How bold can we go? Let's find out!

Question: What is your video game prediction for 2024?

WB Discovery gets out of games and sends its IPs into the winds - Ozzie Mejia, Senior Prognosticator

If we've learned anything from the chaos within WB Discovery over the past few years, it's that there doesn't seem to be a cohesive vision with pretty much anything. Why should gaming be any different? We've already seen with the numerous delays to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League that the publisher wants to make a game that sells, but also makes that sweet, sweet live service money, regardless of whether a game should or shouldn't be a live service at all.

The point I'm ultimately getting at it is, we've also seen that WB Discovery doesn't hesitate to cut costs. You know what's expensive? Making video games. You know what could be a huge money loser? Video games. Imagine, after all this time and investment, that Suicide Squad leads to a loss for the company. It's almost enough to make a goon like David Zaslav reevaluate whether they should be in video games at all.

I predict that WB Games will be no more by the end of 2024, and they'll instead try and go the Disney route of licensing their various IPs. Consequently, this would mean that NetherRealm Studios and Monolith Productions could be adversely affected, but that's never stopped the David Zaslavs of the world before.

I don't want this to happen, but if Suicide Squad and the MultiVersus relaunch don't go well, it's something to think about.

Fable will reappear and get a release date - TJ Denzer, wants to return to Albion

Hey y’all. Remember Fable? Remember how it was announced in 2020? And also how we haven’t heard much about it since? I think it’s about time for a reintroduction. It’s been just under four years since Xbox and Playground Games showed off a teaser for the return of the series. Surely they’ve been hard at work since and have moved closer to having something to show us? We would hope anyways. If Fable somehow makes it into the 2024 lineup, that’d be an amazing surprise, but I don’t think we go another year without hearing about a release date at the very least. Hopefully, anyways.

Nintendo releases a tiny version of Switch not Switch 2 - Asif Khan, Shacknews CEO/EIC/EIEIO

I hate to throw cold water on everyone’s expectations of a new Nintendo hardware release in 2024, but I believe the Big N is going to ship a smaller, cheaper version of the current Nintendo Switch in an effort to beat the DS and PS2 unit sales records. The longer Nintendo can drag out this generation of Switch, the cheaper and easier it will be to manufacture a compelling successor when Super Nintendo Switch (Switch 2) ships in 2025. The real question is what will Nintendo call this hypothetical tiny Switch? Switch Mini? Switch Micro?

NHL 25 releases on PC - Bill Lavoy, Not Getting His Hopes Up

I’m not a huge fan of safe predictions. I’d rather go big with something wild and miss most of the time just to go crazy when I’m right 10 percent of the time.

I’ve been asking for the NHL franchise from EA Vancouver to come to PC for a long time, and I don’t let a single review of the game go by without moaning about it not happening. I’ve been whining about it for so long that I’m finally ready to pour that negative energy into wishing it into the universe.

NHL 25 on PC would have a lot of benefits that I think EA Vancouver aren’t seeing. First, there are absolutely new players who would buy the game that didn’t purchase it on console. Second, there are some of us who would buy it twice, once for that casual couch gameplay, and once to play Franchise Mode on PC where a mouse and keyboard and more responsive menus would be a massive upgrade.

NHL 25 on PC is simply something that needs to happen. Enough is enough. It’s okay to do something because it’s the right move even if the return on investment isn’t massive. I think this is the year that EA Vancouver finally cashes in on this easy win.

Blinx: The Time Sweeper returns - Sam Chandler, Take me back to the early 2000s

Games hit different back in the 2000s. Developers and publishers weren’t afraid to take risks, and there weren’t drastic ramifications if those risks didn’t pay off. This led to an influx of double-A or B-tier video games that deserve another shot at life, and chief among those is Blinx.

I could go on and on about Blinx, but let’s just say that, while not necessarily billed as a Mario competitor or Xbox’s mascot, Microsoft could do a lot worse than have a cat be its family-friendly icon. This little ginger cat can control the flow of time using a vacuum cleaner, which players can use to defeat monsters and solve some time-based puzzles.

The original game was hard as nails, but the sequel eased the pressure while still evolving the formula (like adding campaign co-op). Unfortunately, it never managed to move past being a cult classic. So I think 2024 is the year that Xbox should take a look at its catalogue of IPs from the early Xbox days and revisit Blinx. My wish for JSR came true, so maybe this will too.

Bloodborne gets a remaster announcement ahead of it’s 10th anniversary - Dennis White Jr., Fear the Old Blood!

I am making this prediction because I really hope that it happens. We did just get a brand new Armored Core game which nobody saw coming so I’m swinging for the fences because as a massive Bloodborne fan, a 60 fps version of the game would be phenomenal. It’s been almost a full decade since Bloodborne hit PS5 and Sony needs more exclusives. With the attention to detail and level of quality applied to Demon’s Souls as a PlayStation 5 launch title, why not add a bit more hype to the 2025 line-up with the return of a classic title by that team?

There’s also a prime opportunity to make the game an elite example of their new Adaptive controller in action. Lies of P did a phenomenal job of scratching the itch last year but the return of Bloodborne just feels right, even if the payoff is probably more than a year away.

Pokemon takes a year off - Donovan Erskine, Hoping for better days

Sadly this is likely one of the more far-fetched predictions, and one that will possibly be disproven in about a month and a half. After the significant backlash that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet received for their performance issues in 2022, and with rumors that a new Nintendo console is imminent, this would be the perfect year for the mainline Pokemon series to just sit out. We don’t need a remake, don’t need a sequel to Scarlet and Violet, just put your heads down and give some extra TLC to whatever’s next. I’m sure there’ll be a spin-off or something out this year, but please, let the mainline series breathe. I beg.

So Many Nintendo options - Steve Tyminski, So crazy they just might work!

What is my video game prediction for 2024? I’ll get the one that will never happen and that’s a brand new Snow Brothers game. We talked about it several times during the Shacknews Game of the Year Deliberations with the topic being if F-Zero 99 could happen, why couldn’t a new Snow Bros happen too. There are times where I feel like I’m the only one who wants a new Snow Bros game but I will keep the faith and wish for a new game in the series every time I can ask for it. While I was looking for an image of Snow Bros, I discovered that there was a Snow Bros game announced at TGS last year. That being said, I’m hopeful this new game will release in 2024 so that will be one of my predictions for this year!

Those are our wild and out-there predictions for 2024. Do you have any guesses for what's coming in the year ahead? Join the conversation and let us know in the comments or jump onto the Official Shacknews Community Discord.

Shack Staff

Shack Staff stories are a collective effort with multiple staff members contributing. Many of our lists often involve entires from several editors, and our weekly Shack Chat is something we all contribute to as a group.