After last week’s amazing news of Double Fine’s success with Kickstarter, I wouldn’t be surprised if this news of Notch funding Psychonauts 2 actually came to fruition. At the same time, as much as I want to believe this will happen, part of me thinks this won’t actually work. Notch probably has the money to fund a project like Psychonauts 2, but there is probably more to it than just that. I want to believe, though!

Markus seems to be a philanthropic and indie-developer-focused guy. I could absolutely see him putting his Minecraft gold behind Psychonauts 2 if he thinks he can get any kind of return even close to what he puts into it. The question is simply a matter of how much money it would take to fully fund it.

I’m optimistic. The Double Fine Kickstarter effort has gone really well, and I think they’ll be ready to continue the streak of weird business deals. I’m thinking they may wait for after this, though, as Schafer wants his hands in both.

Wouldn’t be surprised if he did fund this. Considering how much of a killing he made off of Minecraft, he could easily help fund the development for this.

Oh yeah, this seems like a lock. Naughty Dog has two teams now and their second team has been working on this since Uncharted 2 launched. This seems like a pretty obvious exclusive for Sony to have ready for the holidays.

I could really see this going either way, but the lack of any confirmed or even rumored late year exclusives for Sony weighs it in favor of this year for me. Especially considering the issues Last Guardian is having, the title I think Sony was really banking on for the 2012 holiday season.

Is it just me, or does this feel like the one that slips to Q1 2013? We really don’t know how far along it is, but if Sony has good exclusives to ride out the holiday, I could see it getting pushed back for quality. Still, likely.

As much as I would love for this to come out some time this year. I’d rather wait they take their time and completely polish the game and release it next year. By then, it will be worth the wait.

I wouldn’t be surprised if their next game is announced during E3 this year, but I don’t think we’ll actually see it until 2013. Respawn is a smaller team than Infinity Ward was, and I’m sure they want to make sure their new project is as polished as possible. I would love to see them release it this year, but something tells me we’ll have to wait just a little while longer before we finally see whatever they have been cooking hit stores.

I think we’ll definitely learn details about their first game at E3 this year, but I just can’t see it releasing this year unless their team is much bigger and talented than I give them credit for.

It’s really about time for this one. They’ve been working since Modern Warfare 2‘s release, and though it takes time to build a studio, I think a year more than it took the MW3 team sounds about like the pace. (Also, if they take too long, the pedigree fades a bit.)

While I still have the idea behind them releasing Call of Duty and usually rushing a game, I wouldn’t be surprised if they popped something out by the end of the year. I sincerely hope it’s not an FPS though. I wanna see if they’re more than just a one-trick pony.