Poseidon said:
In regards to your points to Sony: 1.) $600 was not enough? 2.) Sony did not copy Nintendo, they just did a half-ass job rehashing it. In regards to your points to Microsoft: 1.) Is HDMI really that necessary? The only noticable difference a person will see if he or she has a 1080p at home, and not too many people have them yet. 2.) People have argued that Microsoft has dropped the ball in Japan with their advertising, not rallying enough developers to make games for their system, and that the types of games that are widely popular in North America and Europe don't translate well in the land of the rising sun. Microsoft did enough, question is why are the Japanese not buying 360s, and you'd have to point the finger at the Wii, and to some extent the PS3. |
Sony copied Nintendo, plain and simple. Motion Sensitive controllers and electronics have existed for decades, not just years; accelerometers were invented back in the 40s, if I recall correctly.
One could claim that innovation never occurs; that even the controller shown in your webcast is simply a copy of the MS Sidewinder, which is simply a couple of accelerometers slapped into a controller. We can then point out that accelerometers owe their existance to gyroscopes, and therefore they aren't totally original either. Or, you we can agree that innovation occurs in degrees, and while nothing is ever totally original (nor is anything ever totally a copy -- even two Sixaxis controllers are slightly different, if only because of production imperfections), some things are more original than others.
Is the Wii Remote completely and entirely innovative? Of course not. In fact, any electronic product owes a serious debt to Tesla, Edison, and Touring, among others. Is the Sixaxis a total copy of the Wii Remote? Again, no. Only a literal copy of the Wii Remote, with the same colors, and name, and button configuration, and shape, etc. would actually be a direct copy. But one can reasonably claim that the Wii Remote is a significant step for video games, and that the Sixaxis almost certainly exists to head off the Wii-mote on rush.
I'm just tired of these arguments breaking down into putty. Whenever someone claims that the Wii-remote is innovative, people point out any and all products that are reasonably similar; no one is claiming that the Wii remote is actually absolutely original. As we've already established, no such thing exists. Heck, even calling it a "remote" means we owe homage to whomever coined the term "remote" for the english language. What we're saying is that the Wii remote is significantly more innovative, and the Sixaxis significantly less so.
Or are you actually claiming that Sony copied a product made by a small off-brand manufacturing firm (Pelican) that never sold well and hasn't been produced since 2000? They thought: "Hey, this small off-brand company made a relatively unsuccesfull product back in 1999 that almost no one has ever heard of. Let's copy that!"
...or they saw that Nintendo was getting a ton of positive buzz about their new Wii-Remote, and tried to head off the on rush.
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