Nintendo Unconcerned By Motion-Control Competitors 150
The Guardian's games blog reports on comments by Nintendo discussing why it's not worried about competition from Microsoft and Sony after their recent motion-control announcements at E3. Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime said, "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."
DUH... (Score:1, Interesting)
And thats why nintendo kicks the crap out of the competition every generation.
Because they rely on making FUN games ppl want to play.
And not just having the latest greatest technology metoo buzzwords in their product.
They win because they're not trying to win. Or even compete with the other offerings.
Thats sure gotta piss off ms and sony tho. :D Who just don't get it.
Project natal (Score:3, Interesting)
While technologically impressive I have one problem with it, missing force feedback control and no additional controllers outside of behaviors. I cannot see this thing going anywhere except for some sports (especially fitness) games without it.
The sony technology was very close to nintendo however, but there at least force feedback probably will be possible, but additional fine grained controls like nintendo has it on the wiimote also still are missing but could be added theoretically!
However Nintendo should be worried, because of the lack of HD support and their absymal performance in the games area 2008 (which slowly is changing this year).
If this is about what the consumer wants... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, where are the good wii games anyway? I walk through the store and look at the Wii releases, and it feels like I'm in the kids section. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I guess. There is no reason not to offer them if that's what your consumers want, but why Nintendo (not Nintendo in Japan apparently) won't you release your high quality games over here? Will it ruin your family system image that for whatever reason you're doing your best to keep? It still makes no sense, there are already other more violent games out there!
Yeah yeah, the internationalization process... Tecmo has not had an issue, like I ranted earlier with the previous 3, and they were interested in having the 4th come out! Why is Nintendo sitting on it's hands? Why is Nintendo sitting on it's hands when people are willing to give them money? Especially when they have a couple of gems just sitting in their laps! They have so few 3rd party developers making quality games [most will max out their gfx capability on the PS3 or 360, at least when it comes to the AAA class titles, and many get exclusive with a certain console, Nintendo cannot afford not to support it's few quality 3rd party developers!
There's a petition to get the game moving forward [I guess to show there is potential for sales]. I guess I should go sign up for it.... actually I forgot which one I saw first, there's at least 6 going on out there! so I won't link any specific one...
Well I guess if they don't want to compete, and earn money, eventually economics will catch up with them. The NES/Super NES will remain the period in their legacy I guess. Minus the few gems out the 64 crowd, it has really gone downhill for Nintendo. I can't think of a spectacular game since the gamecube came out. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Point being I think they should be marketing everything they have, unless they realize, that they are really just shoveling garbageware for the first few years, and only plan on releasing decent games after that phase has passed [if there were the must have games, people would not bother with the junk, at least most wouldn't.]
Final warning to Nintendo: Compete or die. It's the law of economics... Unless you're GM...
Re:If this is about what the consumer wants... (Score:3, Interesting)
Final warning to Nintendo: Compete or die. It's the law of economics... Unless you're GM...
I think that there are plenty of indications that Nintendo competes just fine, thank you very much. Have you read http://lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-strategy.html [lostgarden.com]? It's just a true today as it was four years ago.
Microsoft's Motion Control E3 Fiasco (Score:0, Interesting)
Microsoft is unlikely to recover from their E3 motion control demo fiasco.
To have people participating in the demo give interviews immediately afterward where they either admitted or made it clear the demos shown off were faked was devastating. The fact that Microsoft had nothing that was able to be shown or tried out on the E3 floor like Nintendo did back when they introduced their Wiimote should have been the first warning sign that Microsoft had nothing but vaporware.
Plus the late 2010 date is far off enough to make anything they demoed irrelevant to everyone in the console market.
If Microsoft had:
1. Immediate motion control hardware for sale on store shelves
2. At least a handful of Wii quality games with the same mass appeal
3. New and reliable and cheap hardware to replace the absurdly defective Xbox 360 hardware
perhaps they would have a slim chance of having a fraction of the Wii market due to not having anyone of Miyamoto's caliber to create games in any of Microsoft's tiny first party studios.
After having lost some 7-8 billion dollars on console hardware over the past 8 years and huge cost cutting going on at Microsoft obviously giving up on the traditional console market and jumping into competition with Nintendo was a logical move for Microsoft. One that they botched terribly in execution.
Re:Project natal (Score:3, Interesting)
May I direct you here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw [youtube.com]
To see that you can increase the level of immersion without the need for holding a controller that provides force feedback?
Force feedback and 3D graphics cater to the idea that a game world is still something displayed on a flat screen and interacted with only via the controller. As the above demo shows, there are better ways to interact with the game world than simply by playing around with a controller using your hands.
Natal will be able to perform head tracking without the physical controllers in the above demo.
But despite all that, I'm not sure why the assumption is being made that you wont be able to use the controller as well or even use custom controllers. There is little reason for example you couldn't control an FPS in the classic manner with the controller but use your body to physically duck out the way of incoming projectiles etc. using Natal or even use your feet to kick enemies. This is the sort of place where Natal comes into it's own and separates away from the Wii - whether you use the controller or not you have a much greater direct connection to the game world.
I think a lot of people misunderstand the potential that Natal actually opens up. It is not simply a direct copy of the Wii mote, whilst it can have similar applications it also has a whole range of other applications that are not possible with the Wii mote or Sony's offering and that's before you even take into account the ability for it to effectively be able to scan in real world objects on the fly.
The reality is that we wont recognise the real potential of Natal until it's actually released, but it certainly looks promising and has application far beyond any way of currently interfacing with games including the Wii mote and nunchuk.
Re:DUH... (Score:1, Interesting)
And thats why nintendo kicks the crap out of the competition every generation.
Nintendo hasn't won a console war since the SNES days, and there is a good point to be made that they didn't win that one, either. Right now, they're winning on hardware sold, but losing on the software side with the lowest attach rate of the generation, because everyone's playing Wii Sports, and apparently not much else on the console.
And not just having the latest greatest technology metoo buzzwords in their product.
The entire focus of the Wii is on a technology aspect, the motion control system, just like the entire focus of the DS is on the touch-screen technology. Both systems took the calculated risk of not using the latest technology in other areas, under a belief that a lower price point combined with a technology that the others did not have would win out in the long term. The gamble is that if the others can manufacture the same technology and attract the same market, or the technology proves useless to most of the audience, they have to rely on their games to win out.
On the good side, though, first party game development should be cheaper for Nintendo than for Sony (and possibly MS as well).
On the bad side, they would still make more money from the system if third party developers could put together decent sales on their system.
Re:Games, games, games. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's of course up to perspective. I've been an avid console player my entire life, and have owned most of them (remember the Atari Lynx? yeah, that one too). But when the Dreamcast came out I waited quite awhile before buying one, about midway through it's life. Why? None of the games at launch made me care at all. Perhaps that's one of the real problems the Dreamcast had, despite the vocal, the majority of gamers just weren't finding that much to play on it.
And the PS2 kind of proves Nintendo's point doesn't it? It was where the fun ended up, so did the players. Dreamcast was indeed much better hardware, but the reality is any suggestion that it's game library was better is simply myth. It had a few gems, but that was it. Anyway, just a differing opinion :)
Re:Games, games, games. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's ironic that you mentioned the DVD player. Really, it was one of the reasons that the PS2 was so successful. I remember people were buying the things for watching movies alone.
Years later, PS3 comes out with Bluray and it nearly kills Sony. They had huge losses last year. People aren't flocking to Bluray like they did with DVDs.
More interesting though is: what will happen next generation? Will there be another disc format beyond Bluray, or is it all digital from here on out? Sony has used their consoles as a means of promoting their formats (DVD, Bluray, UMD) for a couple of consoles now. Now the PSP Go goes digital. Will PS4 be digital as well?