As we've seen this holiday season, a year can be as notable for what didn't show up as for what did. And 2010 will be no different.

Here are some things that you may hope will be coming over the next 12 months, but really, probably won't.

New Nintendo Hardware - The Wii is faltering at retail, and with each passing year looks worse and worse stacked next to a HD console. Sony and Microsoft are going to steal some of Nintendo's motion-sensing thunder in 2010. The DS is still selling well, but it's getting a little long in the tooth. All signs that new Nintendo hardware may be on the way, right?

No. Just because the Wii doesn't have quite the same buzz it did 12 months ago doesn't mean it's dead. It's still selling millions, and will probably do so for another year or two at least. And Nintendo couldn't care less how old the DS is, because all they need to do is keep re-releasing the thing with different casings and a new accessory or two and people will snap it up.

An R18+ Rating For Australia - Sure, changes to Australia's archaic video gaming classification guidelines may be on the table, but we're still a long way from reaching a decision, let alone enacting change. These are constitutional changes we're talking about after all, which at the best of times move at a snail's pace. And that's assuming South Australia's attorney-general, Michael Atkinson, has a change of heart. Which he won't.

One day, in the future, Australia will join the rest of the developed world in having an adults-only video game rating. But that day won't be in 2010.

The Year Of The PS3 - It's been a rallying cry since 2007 rolled around. "This will be the year of the PS3!" And what a call it is. After all, everyone loves an under-dog. But just what does that mean?

I'm 99% sure it means, based on the context it's been used previously, that "this will be the year the PS3 outsells the 360".

(Almost) Every year, the PS3 has got cheaper, and every year, AAA exclusive software is released for the console. Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted 2, the list goes on. Yet every year - and almost every month - it's outsold by the Xbox 360.

Things have been looking better of late, with a price cut, snappy advertising campaign and Uncharted 2 helping generate the most sustained period of positive "buzz" for the console since its launch. Yet despite all of that, in November, the year's biggest shopping month in the US, it was still outsold by the Xbox 360.

Now, this isn't to say the PlayStation 3 will forever remain lagging behind the 360. It may not! But we're not talking forever here. We're talking 2010. And if Home, Blu-Ray, a movie store, Killzone 2, an all-new piece of PS3 hardware and a hefty price-cut couldn't put the PS3 ahead of the 360 in sales in 2009, I can't see games like MAG, God of War III and GT5 (all games I think will appeal primarily to those already owning a PS3) doing the trick in 2010.

If you think it means something else - like "the PS3 finally has a good year" - well, that's a different story.

The Year Of Motion-Sensing Gaming - The Wii ushered in the era of motion-sensing in video games, but really, it wasn't until Wii MotionPlus earlier this year that it could do so with any real accuracy. And how many games do we have that use it properly? Wii Sport Resort, some EA Sports games, and...

Now, however, with both Microsoft and Sony launching motion-sensing controllers in 2010, you're probably going to see news reports proclaiming this will finally be the year it stops being an idle curiosity and impetus for a Wii party, and gets real, becoming the standard across video gaming.

Uh, no. The Wii launched in 2006, and a treasured few games aside, has done little to promote the merits of motion-controlled gaming. Most games either don't use the motion controls properly, or accurately, or they don't use them at all. And the Wii launched three years ago. Natal and Sony's controller may not take quite as long to get things "right", but they won't get it right straight out of the box, either.

There will be busted games, ill-advised ports and titles which simply don't work with motion controls. It's a learning process, and learning takes time. We'll eventually see most, if not all games controlled via some kind of motion-sensing device, but that certainly won't be in 2010. Or 2011, for that matter.

A Tiger Woods Game - Despite early claims of support, there's no way EA Sports will continue their association with disgraced golfer Tiger Woods, especially now he's walked away from the sport for an indefinite period. It won't be the end of EA Sports' golf games, of course, just the end of ones called "Tiger Woods".

Expect something a little more mundane, yet which also emphasises EA's favour for all things officially licensed. "PGA Golf Tour", or something.

A New Zelda Game - Come on. It hasn't even been officially announced yet. No screenshots, no movies, no information, Nintendo haven't even settled on an art style for the game. Wish all you want, Zelda fanboys, and as one I'll wish right along with you, but deep down, you know there's no way in hell a new Zelda game for Wii will be out in 2010.

If you were among the PlayStation 3 owners looking forward to a lazy holiday season spent playing with your fuzzy new EyePet friend, prepare to be terribly disappointed. GameStop and Amazon both shifted the listed release data for the EyePet from November 2009 to April 2010, and now Gamervision has received the official word from Sony.

"The North American territory has decided to take additional time to focus on the EyePet product and can confirm it will not be available this holiday. EyePet is an innovative and exciting new IP to the PS3 platform and SCEA marketing will spend additional time to continue educating consumers and retail channels, setting the table for a successful product launch. We will provide more details on an updated launch timeframe very soon"

As Gamervision points out, the delay comes at an odd time, as review copies of the game have already been handed out to major outlets, whose reviewers are even now, as we speak, experiencing the sort of fuzzy goodness that the rest of us will be left without during the cold winter months.

For now we can only hope that the April release date listed at GameStop is simply speculation, and that Sony won't keep the warm fuzzies from us for too long.

EyePet Delay Official [Gamervision]

It's all in the name of multiplayer, according to the Activision press release announcing Blur's move into next year, a move that will give the development team "more time to enhance the game's innovative and distinctive online multiplayer gameplay". In other words, the online isn't quite finished yet.

"We are committed to making Blur a great new racing franchise, and we are very encouraged by the game's design," stated Mike Griffith, President and CEO, Activision Publishing. "The additional time will allow the studio to fully optimize the vision they set out to create for Blur including a distinctive and groundbreaking multiplayer mode that will appeal to a broad audience."

It remains to be seen when in 2010 the game will be released, with the company only mentioning the year without any specific month or season or even half. Here's hoping it's early in the year, for the sake of anyone who might have been really looking forward to it. Anyone?

At this point, January through March of next year is going to be the biggest first quarter in gaming ever, as an increasing number of games originally slated for fall and holiday 2009 releases get shunted into next year. Capcom dropped us a line to explain the reasoning behind the delay.

Dark Void is moving into Capcom's fiscal Q4 in order to get the game out of the crowded fall game season and to allow the development team more time to polish and enhance the game experience.

One of those two excuses doesn't really hold up, but we'll take a more polished game at a later date over one rushed to market any day of this year or the next.

Publisher Take Two announced its revised release slate during a call with investors on Monday afternoon, timed to elaborate on news of the BioShock 2 delay.

The company "currently plan[s] to release all four titles in the first half of calendar 2010," company CEO Ben Feder told investors. He included the caveat that the company always strives to find the "optimal" time to release their titles.

The publisher also has announced games for the second half of the year, though he declined to name what they will be. Speculation among investment analysts is that one of those late 2010 titles could be a new Grand Theft Auto, given the development patterns of franchise development studio Rockstar. When asked directly by analysits on the call if a new GTA was coming late in 2010, Feder and Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick declined to confirm, deny or offer any specifics.

The plan to release four big sequels in the first half of 2010 is a byproduct of Take Two's expressed desire to maintain a standard of high quality for its games, a claim also used to justify GTA IV's push from its original fall 2007 release window to spring of 2008.

But Zelnick also said that the BioShock 2 push was also partially due to a softness at U.S. retail, where the company is seeing orders for new titles come in lower than expected and where, he said, the number of high-quality titles may crowd the marketplace. While that may be the case, early 2010 is beginning to look crowded as well with the Take Two foursome joining God of War III, Dante's Inferno, Mass Effect 2 and several other games slated for early next year.

One analyst asked if BioShock 2's delay could be blamed on the PS3 version of the game or on its series-first online components. "The pushback of BioShock 2 is related to development overall," Zelnick said. "I certainly wouldn't want to pinpoint it to any one platform or any one feature because that's not the case."

The news comes from an article in the LA Business Journal on the success that companies such as Activision have had with controller based games like Guitar Hero. Nestled away in said article is THQ's Chief Executive Brian Farrell spilling the beans on an upcoming controller-based title that he believes will give the company a "competitive edge".

"We have something that we think is different from anything else out there and will give us a competitive advantage," Farrell said. "Beyond that, we can't say much."

We've been scratching our heads over this one all morning, and the best we can come up with is either some sort of video gaming sponge, or as Totilo suggested, "a folding-chair controller to be used as a foreign object in future WWE games."

Of course, any new piece of video game plastic begs the question, is it really necessary? My own sentiments on the matter are echoed as the article continues, oddly enough, by Activision's Bobby Kotick.

But as more game companies toy with making their own controllers, it increases the danger of consumer overload."Obviously there's only so much room in the living room for these kinds of things," Kotick said. "We don't want to clutter things up."

Yes. The last thing we need is a game that encourages players to buy four drum kits.

Control Issues [Los Angeles Business Journal - they make you pay to read]

Ishaan over at game site Flame War ADVANCE has a two part interview with execs at Exigent, a Noida-based Indian outsourcing company that deals with video game art. The company's founders cut their teeth working on games like Quake and Wing Commander. The company's Chief Creative Officer Paul Steed sits on the GDC's advisory board and had this to offer about the future and India's role in that future:

The future of gaming is really mobile games and PC games. There's more computers in the world, there's more cell phones in the world than there are consoles and that'll never change. India's interesting because the government's really supporting broadband users...

Exigent's VP of Production, Jesse Rapczak, chimes in:

The real question is, what's going to happen to consoles when India and China become world powers in gaming? Because, the console market is strictly geared at U.S., Europe and Japan. I mean, there's not a sizeable console market in China and India. But, China and India together have majority of the world's population, almost...The numbers say that console gaming is going to go down. And PC, online and mobile gaming is on the rise, and all this will happen in India and China over the next five years. Come 2010, some people might not be playing game consoles. Doubtful, but...

Yah, 2010 is a little too close to forecast the end of game consoles as we know it. I mean, I don't think astronauts will have made it to Jupiter by then. Brian Ashcraft

Part I
Part II [Flame War ADVANCE]