E3: Nintendo says no to post-Natal depression
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Did anyone win at the games expo - if so, was it us gamers?
So should Nintendo worry about the motion control advances revealed by Microsoft and Sony at E3? Not according to Nintendo of America chief, Reggie Fils-Aime. Speaking to CNET, the exec was in bullish form, down-playing the tech unveiled so lavishly by his rivals:
“The only thing I’ll say is a rhetorical question. Is it fun? If it’s fun, then I tip my hat and say, ‘Well done.’ But what’s happening sounds to me a lot like, ‘Who’s got the prettiest picture. Who’s got high-definition. Who has the best processing power?’ It sounds like technology, when the consumer wants to be entertained. Our focus is how do we take active play and make it entertainment. And that’s what we’re going to continue to focus on. And I think we’ve done a great job with Wii Motion Plus, and the Balance Board. And we’re going to continue to push the envelope in ways to make it more fun.”
This was, of course, a rather disingenuous comment, as Nintendo, too, was at the show hawking new hardware - the bizarre Vitality Sensor; a technology in search of an application if ever there was one. Also, Reggie’s disinterested and rather disparaging viewpoint on the Sony/Microsoft turf war is undermined earlier in the interview:
“The near-term opportunity is the consumer who owns an PS3 or an Xbox 360 and has been bad-mouthing Wii to their friends. We can reach that consumer with games like The Conduit or Tiger Woods with Wii Motion Plus [...] We think we win over the Halo audience with something like The Conduit, a multi-player, online, shooting experience, or Dead Space Extraction. And you know what? Once those people buy into Wii, they’ll go buy Mario Kart or Wii Fit Plus. We’re not going to be satisfied just picking up that existing gamer. We have to reach beyond and get that consumer who doesn’t game. That’s the only way we’ll be able to continue growing as a company and as an industry.”
Nintendo isn’t an aloof agent working beyond the confines of the traditional games market, as it is sometimes pictured. It is in there with its sleeves rolled up going after the ‘core gamer’. After all, there are 30 million people with Xbox consoles, and the machine boasts the highest attach rate in this generation, with owners buying, on average, eight games a year - three games higher than Wii or PS3 customers (see Gamasutra research here).
And now Microsoft’s Natal project looks to be a serious encroachment into Wii territory. According to Buzzstudy, the full body motion detection tech achieved the highest amount of positive online ‘buzz’, compared to Sony’s motion controller and Wii’s Motion Plus.
Of course, there’s a whole universe of variables between impressing a bunch of bloggers and getting mainstream users to ‘buy in’ to the new Xbox vision, but Natal must be a concern. It has proved suitably beyond the Wiimote to capture the imagination of news editors around the globe, and judging by the number of my non-gaming friends who’ve asked me about the hardware (”It’s like that computer in Minority Report, right?”) it has crossover potential.
It’s not just the complete absence of a controller that’s getting people, it’s the new forms of interaction hinted at during the press briefing. The idea of holding up an object or drawing and getting the game to ‘copy’ it (in one demo we see a kid holding up his customised skateboard which is then scanned for use in a boarding sim) hints at a new form of hassle-free creative interplay. Even more significant, the suggestion that the character in Lionhead’s Milo demo can recognise the player’s voice and even his or her emotions suggests a revolution in human/avatar interaction.
On the other had, some (here’s one) have felt that Microsoft’s Natal dream was too intangible, while Sony delivered compelling real-world promise with its PSP Go and magic wand announcements. There’s plenty of mileage in this standpoint. And away from all those new technological titbits, Sony got one of the key new gaming franchise announcements of the show: Agent.
Certainly, though, what we’re seeing in the post-E3 landscape, is a strange reversal of roles - Nintendo is determined to grab the hardcore, Microsoft and Sony are continuing in their pursuit of the casual marketplace. As gamers, we can only benefit from the ensuing chaos.
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