2008 is going to be historic, one of the reasons is that Q1 and Q2 game releases will have some fantastic titles like Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto IV and Super Smash Bros Brawl. This is unusual in the sense that historically the first half of any given year has pretty poor game releases , the term; "summer games drought" is not used lightly. Then at the end of the year we will have releases like Spore and Banjo Kazooie so it should be fantastic.

Well it should be, right? Well it may not be. There has recently been a lot of recent ramblings of a successor to the DS and a successor to the Xbox 360. Now this is hardly unusual, the DS is three years old now and talk of a successor is very much standard. The 360 talk has been less substantial with some articles on what the specs may be like.

Obviously both companies have vehemently denied the rumours. Nintendo are still using the rather horrible stance of "if it is still selling why change it?" When I say horrible it comes across as Nintendo not wanting to improve their technology because they are making a mint off it so it seems pointless to them.

Now I'm concentrating on both the DS and the Xbox 360 because I am a little concerned for both consoles. You see both consoles at this moment lack a killer app for 2008. I am also going to lump in the Wii in that statement too.

That's not to say they lack any game for 2008, the 360 is getting Alan Wake, Ninja Gaiden 2 and Banjo Kazooie. The DS is also getting Ninja Gaiden and the Wii is getting Mario Kart. However they have all released their biggest titles, Halo 3 Legend of ,Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Super Mario Galaxy respectively.

The problem is they haven't actually announced anything big for 2008, meanwhile the Playstation 3 has always been pointing towards 2008 with titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gran Turismo 5. Now surely I'm not the only one concerned about that.

Now I'd like to focus on the Xbox 360, recent events such as Peter Moore moving to EA, Bizarre Creations being bought by Activisions, Bungie becoming a separate studio again and Bioware being eaten up by EA show a lack of vision for the 360. All three studios have produced the biggest exclusives for the console and Microsoft just letting them go seems awful strange now don't it?

Now I am no longer suggesting that Microsoft are going to either drop of the business or release another new Xbox year (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bDN_5sQKjJQ) but Microsoft must have a good master plan or seemingly no plan at all.

Putting it bluntly 2008 seems on paper to have some good releases but 3 consoles have a slightly rocky road ahead of them.