Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – What I Got Right/Wrong In 2018

Mike Sanders / 6 years ago

Mikes Rant – What I Got Right And Wrong In 2018

With the end of the year, I have been writing a lot of rants and making a lot of predictions about how I think the tech world will go. Like Nostradamus though, while I might get many things right, I’m not right all of the time either. I am, however, fully willing to admit when I might get something wrong (don’t ask my wife if that’s true).

In a recap of the year, let’s look at how well I did!

Right! – Bitcoin Price Plunge

Might as well start off with one of my better predictions. Throughout 2017 we saw the Bitcoin price go absolutely through the roof. With the price at the start of the year a little over $1000, by Christmas, it reached nearly $20,000. It was a craze that got many people into Bitcoin mining and also had the rather shocking effect of making graphics card prices soar.

While the price kept rising though, I had more than a few concerns about it. Once it topped $10,000 my amazement started turning into outright concern. No currently should increase in value by that much this quickly! As such, from August onwards, I started making more and more vocal predictions that a crash would happen. I was promptly told to shut up by many including a supposed University Lecturer on Cryptocurrencies who suggested that we should hire him to speak about how Bitcoin will continue to go up and up.

Well, January came and lo and behold, the crash started. By March/April 2018, the price was down to around $5500-$6000. Fortunately, it does seem to have stabilised a little since which was what I said it needed to do from the beginning. So, while we don’t offer any form of financial advice here at eTeknix, I’m at least rather pleased that I was right about this!

Wrong! – Graphics Card Prices

This does sort of fall into line with my Bitcoin prediction because as above, the increase in it’s value let to a massive expansion of mining which sparked a much higher demand for graphics cards which led to ridiculous price increases. To put this into content, a graphics card I bought in 2016 for £200 was selling for £275 in the middle of 2017.

With me predicting the crash though, I also suggested that it would see graphics card prices start to returning to something sensible. Well, I was definitely wrong on that. While they haven’t increased in 2018, they certainly haven’t dropped by a significant amount either. There are a number of GPUs which are now finally floating around their MSRP, but not many. Nvidia’s 20XX range of graphics cards clearly shows that Team Green has no intention of going cheap.

Despite being wrong though, I still have hopes and the belief that they will drop at some point. In this case, however, it just clearly didn’t happen as quickly as I thought.

graphics cards

Right! – A New Fallout Game

Around February this year, it was rumoured that Bethesda was working on a new AAA-title that was due to release before the end of the year. Having thought (and written about it) quite extensively, I eventually came to the conclusion that the most likely release would be a new Fallout game. In a nutshell, pretty much everyone in the comments told me I was wrong.

Fast forward to the Summer and Bethesda announced that Fallout 76 was on the way! To me, a new Fallout game made total sense and frankly, I was surprised so few agreed with me.

Well, now Fallout 76 is finally out, I’m not sure what to think. I daresay many are thinking it was probably better if I was wrong!

Kind Of Wrong! – AMD And Ryzen

With the success of the launch of the Ryzen series of processors in 2017, I had suspected that AMD might finally start to claw back the dominance that Intel had on the market. Looking back on it now, while AMD has made some moves in the right direction, they were certainly not as significant as I believed.

Yes, the 2nd-generation of Ryzen has again proven to be very popular with consumers, but not to the level to really bring about any huge market shifts. The latest Steam Survey shows that AMD processors have roughly a 14% market share. Not bad, and certainly an improvement on the sub-10% seen towards the end of 2017, but even so, I had suspected that figures might have tipped 20%.

It was, for AMD, a year of relatively unremarkable consolidation so I wasn’t entirely wrong, but I certainly wasn’t right either.

Wrong – PS5/Xbox Announcement

With the PS5 expected to release around this time in 2020 (so basically 2 years away from now). As such, in looking to build up a little hype, I had expected Sony to make a PS5 announcement of some description this year. Perhaps not anything specific, but that it was being made and even a rough anticipated release date.

On the whole, though, we’ve had pretty much no news at all. The absolutely strongest we’ve seen is an indication that the PS5 and Xbox Whatever will both be powered by an AMD Ryzen based APU.

So yes, I definitely got this one wrong and saying that we can expect an announcement in 2019 seems a little obvious, but I’m going to do it anyway. Sony will announce the PS5 in 2019 with a 2020 release!

Right! – Telltale Games Shutdown

I started with a good prediction so I might as well end on a good one too. Back in the Summer, it was revealed that Telltale Games had appointed a new CEO. Nearly everyone saw this as merely a change in management to try and take the company into some interesting new territory. Me on the other hand? I was far more sceptical.

At the time I wrote an article entitled ‘Trouble at Telltale’, you can read it here! – In brief, I suspected that the change in ownership was more to do with the fact that the company was experiencing financial difficulties. This, I should add, was by no means confirmed by anything. There was certainly nothing public, as far as I was aware, that there were big cash-flow problems. Well, there was and the studio shut down roughly halfway through the production of the final series of The Walking Dead.

Admittedly, I didn’t expect the closure to happen so soon, but I was expecting it none-the-less.

Fortunately, the good news is that the remaining episodes in the series have been picked up and it can be finished. Hurrah!

mikes rant christmas edition

What Do You Think?

Impressed with Mike’s predictions? How do you think he’ll do for 2019? Should he give up journalistic media and just become a soothsayer? – Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer

Mikes is a miserable sod at the best of times and may not necessarily be experiencing the love and forgiveness of the Christmas Season. He does, however, always love to tell people that he was right! He can’t help it!- As such, please note that Mikes Rant is an opinion piece and we at eTeknix as a whole may not (and probably don’t) agree with him!

Did you enjoy Mikes Rant? If so, please check out his previous ones which include: