noname2200 said:
I question these assumptions, especially the bolded ones. I don't think there's any strong evidence that Sony's main competitor is the Wii. Sure, they want to move as many PS3's as they possibly can, but few of their actions imply that they're thinking of Nintendo rather than Microsoft. Look to what moves they've made this generation: they priced their console outside of the mainstream's reach at $600, and then acted like they were doing consumers a favor ("get a second job," anyone?). Since then, none of the games they've highlighted have been aimed at gaining ground on the Wii; they've been about competing with the same demographic that Microsoft is going after. Killzone 2, God of War III, Resistance, Uncharted...these games are aimed almost exclusively at the 16-25 year old male demographic. Their one token effort at going for the expanded audience was a user-generated-content game which requires players to become incredibly familiar with an unintuitive level-editor to get any results, and even then it's absurd to think that most gamers want to make their own game rather than play a game. Even their new motion controller shows that they're still going after Microsoft's audience rather than Nintendo's: the tech demoes they showed off displayed things like swordfighting, RTS's, and sports games, all of which are designed to interest the traditional gamer. Were Sony's goal to outsell Nintendo, rather than to outsell Microsoft, they would not adopt a tactic of going almost-exclusively after the self-proclaimed hardcore gamer unless they had very questionable judgment (a debatable point, I concede). I know this is getting messy, but my browser cannot easily handle the length of this post, damn I.E!!! Sony is definately not targeting the solutions that the original Wii concept and Wiimote brought to us. Nintendo at this point seems to be stepping back a little and letting the third party publishers promote Wii M+, its a concept which is aimed directly at the core markets. Sony would not be competing with games like Mario Kart, but games like Dead Space extraction which have M+ support IIRC. Their goal cannot be to outsell the Wii or beat them on the original concept of the Wiimote. The games made with Wii M+ are outside of Nintendos core competency for the most part. They have little interest in competing directly for it, so thats why they have recently emphasised third parties in this area. The Wii M+ bundles are a perfect example of Nintendo engaging with 3rd parties to cover for areas where they cannot or will not compete. Wii M+ is designed more to attract a wider range of people, but its focus is more the coreward than expanded sides of the market. Even applying disruption theory, Wii M+ is more synchronous to the motivations of Sony than the Wiimote and original Nintendo games. Its a market which Sony can and must compete with Nintendo for. Theres still a huge gulf between where the Wii is currently and where the Wii M+ and Sony mote could target. Its quite a large gulf in the market with likely over 50M potential consumers between them. I made a simplifying assumption between the HD consoles because I felt the need to emphasise the Wii and PS3/Xbox 360 interactions. Its Ceteris Parabis or all other things remaining equal. I'm even more uncertain that Microsoft's goal is accurately stated here. Again, the software they're releasing tells us the true picture: Gears of War, Mass Effect, Halo, Alan Wake...these are all about the exact same demographic that Sony's going after. Were Microsoft truly interested in muscling into the Wii's turf, they would be focusing more on software that the expanded audience cares about: non-traditional titles, intuitively-controlled games, "friendlier" looking stuff...the type of things that are likely to hook in an audience that has strayed from or hitherto been indifferent to gaming as a whole. Things like Natal are not examples to the contrary: the few efforts they've made to target the expanded audience have been completed products purchased from third-parties (which demonstrates their real level of commitment to the subject). Much more importantly, I can't think of a single game they've released that's meant to employ the Wii's design philosophy; efforts such as Lips don't do so (it's a karaoke game, not one that revolves around increased accessibility and unexplored possibilities). You're In The Movies and Buzz! definitely don't do so (they feature dumbed-down controls, to the point where Buzz! in particular assumes the player is a retard who needs a monstrously-sized button to chime in, but they're examples of games that are "simplified," not "streamlined." The values behind the Wii are about letting you do just as much as you can with traditional controls, not restricting what you can do to just one or two actions). Even games like Viva Pinata, which theoretically are meant to reach beyond Microsoft's core customers, show that they're not employing the Wii's concepts: while a damned fun game, it's a ridiculously complicated one that requires lots of commitment before the player can even begin to understand what's going on, let alone actually play the game. It remains to be seen if they'll approach Natal differently, but considering what they showcased with it, I have little faith that they will. Microsoft covets Nintendo's new customers, but it takes only token and fumbling steps towards courting the expanded audience. They have been moving in this direction for a while, the services and upgrades they have added tell a truer story of the repositioning of the Xbox 360 than the games they have released. Games have a far longer lead time and they cannot be released until the appropriate supporting positioning and technologies are in place. Im restating what I've said before, however many of the things that Microsoft have done have been to target Not and Non gaming type people. Not gaming means, you wouldn't catch them dead with a Wiimote in their hand and Non gaming are the expanded audience Nintendo initially targetted. Its a big market down there, consider the sheer number of people who don't have a Wii compared to the number of TVs out there. The Xbox 360 is being repositioned as an invisible console. Natal is not meant to position the Xbox 360 as a console challenger, the best description is that it destroys and remakes the Xbox 360 as something other than what you would think of as a console. As I stated, the console changes with regards to Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Sky, Avatars, Natal, 100 vs 1, Direct downloads mean as a whole the console does not have to be physically interfaced with. It means that you use the Xbox 360 you don't need a seperate box, they are rendering the concept of a seperate console irrelevant. The Xbox 360 as you know it, wont exist with Natal! Whats left is an interface to services and software. In the red corner... Sony! For Sony, they could not act easily without Nintendo casting the first stone. They could not compete on a level playing field with the PS3 against the original concept of the Wiimote, they would simply not have been able to compete on that battlefield so they didn't even try. Wii motion+ is a different story, by competing nearer to the core space they exist and by competing with technology they have a greater position of strength to fight from. However they cannot forge adoption of such technology alone amongst third party developers, they had to wait until Nintendo themselves brought the fight to them. So had Wii M+ not existed, its likely that Sony themselves would not and could not have released their mote concept so quickly. Support for third parties for the Wii M+ can easily be ported for the Sony mote, the technologies and concepts are so very similar. I have a very different interpretation of Sony's actions. Sony took out patents seven years ago for a device similar to the wand they have now, which shows that they very much so were thinking about the possibility of adopting motion controls. It's revealing, however, that they did not make any real effort at doing so until Nintendo unveiled its Wiimote, which, I argue, is the reason that Sixaxis was thrown into the PS3 at the last minute (it was certainly never mentioned before). This tells me two things: Sony actively rejected the idea that motion controls like the Wiimote would be successful, and that this rejection was so strong that they did little to nothing to further develop the idea until the Wiimote proved to be so stunningly successful (or else why wait three and a half years after launch to release your own?). I also can't believe Sony thought it needed someone else to force third-parties along a path Sony wanted them to take: this is the same company that thought it could single-handedly push Blu-Ray technology, and which assumed that third-parties would fall in line with anything Sony did. And if Sony expected that third-parties would do what Nintendo orders them to, they're a few cents short of a dollar. Sony didn't need Nintendo to strike first; Nintendo caught them with their pants down, and they're now scrambling to play catch-up. I'm also skeptical that porting between Motion+ and the Sony mote will be that common; leaving aside the fact that this would require upscaling (and thus games that are much uglier than other PS3 games), there's the fact that Motion+'s adoption will be aided with Wii Sports Resort, which Sony has yet to show a single bit of software that will convince consumers to get its own controller. That's especially worrisome, considering that it's releasing in just nine months. Will there be enough of these things (which require you to buy a remote and an eyetoy) to justify the expense of porting? And since many developers won't do so, why get this remote when you can get the ported games and so many more on the Wii? Sony has partnered with Wii M+ middleware designer AiLive so yes they actively rejected or didn't believe the market was ready for such an implementation yet. However its difficult to force adoption of a technology similar to Wii M+ without Wii M+ existing. If they had done it on their own they couldn't take advantage of the automatic development that would be invested in Wii M+ because the Nintendo effort would be expected to succeed whilst the Sony effort would be expected to fail. Your skepticism is pretty universal really. Thats why they only unveiled their competitor once Wii M+ was unveiled and close to release. Sony is in not position to force anything, they haven't got the resources to do anything but go with the flow. They can actively port the technology behind the interface, but not the games themselves. You have to seperate the two concepts. Think on the margins here, it doesn't cost third parties to use technologies they have already created for the Wii on the PS3, but they potentially gain with higher software sales and they have learnt the lesson that slow adoption of technology can be costly. Little cost. some gains... its pretty easy to think that they will use it.
In the green corner... Microsoft! For Microsoft, Natal exists because the Wii exists. As a console company, they only exist at the high end of the console market to essentially block Sony from attacking their core business. As a company they exist at the mass market level, their main products in Windows and Office are designed to be adopted by the whole of the market. Natal has nothing to do with Wii motion + or Sony's; mote it is a combined software and hardware platform designed to attack the Wiis original core market. So whilst Sony and Nintendo are attempting to sort out their mote antics in the first place, Microsoft is challenging the very existance of the Wiimote or its derivatives. Natal is something that only a company like Microsoft can make, it essentially embeds years of research and development into alternative computer interface technologies from voice to motion and gesture control into the one product and leverages their excellent understanding of computer networking. I agree that that's Microsoft's grand plan for gaming (i.e. blocking Sony's threat to Microsoft's core business), but I'm not at all convinced Natal is what you're making it out to be. For starters, unless I've been hearing wrong from several sources, Microsoft didn't make Natal, they bought the base tech (the ZCam) off a company that showed it off at last year's CES, and only expanded on it. If true, this is especially important because it means Microsoft is not completely devoted to making sure this thing takes off: unlike the Wiimote, they haven't put years of thought into what should go into it/what type of software they want to make that needs this controller. Their demo shows that this is definitely the case: what they demonstrated were two "proof-of-concept" demoes, not full-fledged games. If they're to challenge Nintendo for the expanded audience, they'll need games that employ the principles behind the Wii, and they have not shown that they have a firm grasp on what those principles are, let alone how to exercise them. Natal is the software platform, the cameras they used for E3 were their own internal designs. Buying the other companies was just patent protection and getting access to other technologies. They have put years of thought into the software, the technologies they use are mostly pulled straight out of their research and development departments. Natal is in their core business, you have to think beyond their console gaming cock blocking of Sony and look at their main bread and butter operations. They are a middleware company, every piece of software outside of their console operations is an interface between hardware and software or some useful application. They have a firm handle on principles outside of Nintendos realm. They don't care about the hardware, using Natal you don't even need a seperate console you could simply package the whole lot into a TV. Right at this moment they are selling TV companies on the principles of Natal and I've even seen a video of a TV using the NXE interface, using a gesture interface with Xbox 360 games. The Xbox 360/Natal is a service delivery platform and to say that the whole concept is limited to just games is simply incorrect. Natal is the closest thing to a Windows incursion in the home electronics space. They don't need to make the 'best' interface, they just need to make Natal one of the most adopted interfaces. The western front in the war against improved waggle. Sony and Nintendo can no longer be said to be aiming for different segments of the market. With such similar technologies they will be aiming for similar consumers. The methods they wage this war will be different but the results are the same. Nintendo will use their newly aquired pool of mercenary third party publishers to take the battle to Sony here, whilst Sony's standing army of first party talent and their own mercenaries to fight the battles. This is not an area where Nintendo will commit their first party talent to, they have a very profitable heartland they have carved out to exploit after all. This is a battle between two distinct belief systems and strategies, one trying to capture more of the market and the other thankful to fight a war in land it understands. Will Nintendo prevail, or will they find out that fighting a war in the east a wasted endeavour? The crux of both their efforts are somewhere between what people would call the core market and the market which Nintendo initially targeted. Its for the hearts and wallets of the people whom for whatever reason are not drawn to either Nintendos efforts with the Wii or Sony's efforts with the PS3. Its an open battle, but not a fair fight. Nintendo has every ounce of momentum on their side here, so for the first time Sony will find out what it was like to try and gain traction against something like the PS2 last generation. However Sony is for the first time fighting a battle which they can win this generation. They have a strong first party, they have strong technology; so whilst they are an underdog they can win with enough luck and the right moves. I quibble with several statements here. Most notably, I believe it will be Nintendo, not third-parties, who ultimately push Nintendo hardware: third-parties will simply sustain any momentum Nintendo carves out. That's less the case with Sony: Sony has some fine developers, but they've always been heavily reliant (although not exclusively so!) on third-parties to sell their hardware. This matters greatly, since it seems to me that third-parties will be much more ambivalent about trail-blazing. I also believe you've misstated who Sony is going for, but those points were made above, and needn't be repeated here. I also think the situation needs to be framed much differently. Now that Microsoft and Sony have obliquely conceded that the values behind gaming have shifted in the direction Nintendo gambled that they would, it's no longer about "core" versus "expanded." The question we must ask ourselves is "do Microsoft and Sony really understand the limited role of the technology, or do they think they can win by just making the toys and ignoring the fresh tactics that this new form of warfare demands?" Simply put, it doesn't matter how good your equipment is if you have no idea how to use it properly. I have to admit im not nearly as clued up to what Sony is up to as I am with Microsoft. I pay much more attention to the latter than the former. I do think you're a little rigid in your thinking about the different strategies. Try to think in a more fluid way rather than consider each to be directly attacking where the other one has gone before, think about how each would try to 'flow' into a new opportunity. Im not criticising your thinking, im just trying to find common ground between us.
The eastern front, the fight for the very existance of waggle. Microsoft had better be prepared for a fight. They are taking their fight into the very heart of Nintendo's stronghold, they are challenging the very existance of the Wiimote itself. The base technology which motion+ attaches to. From their comments at E3, Natal is designed to challenge the very need for the Wiimote to exist. Microsoft seems to believe that the Wiimote itself can be replicated, emulated and beaten by using the human body as the controller. Microsoft is going to use Natal in a fight against Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Wii Play, Mario Kart etc, the trump cards of Nintendos efforts. Their pre-positioning moves have all been towards this goal, its a battle purely on the grounds of software. This isn't the Xbox 360 vs the Wii, the Xbox 360 will soon cease to exist. This is software vs software, interface vs interface. All their moves with regards to the Xbox 360 in direct downloads of games, movies and avatars have been in preparation for this fight. They have been designed to make the Xbox 360 invisible. Soon people will not even need to touch, see or interface physically with anything called Xbox 360, which is exactly how the Wii is designed to blend into a home unobtrusively. This is truely a battle of synchronous motivation, but not synchronous means and talents. I agree to an extent with the statements in these quoted paragraphs: that is indeed the rhetoric Microsoft used, and that is indeed the potential that the tech has. However, it is the bolded sentence where we begin to go our separate ways. Hardware means little, software means everything. Microsoft may indeed use Natal to challenge the Wii ____ line of games, and the rest of Nintendo's star games. But, and it bears repeating, Microsoft has not shown that it understands what it is that the expanded audience wants, and I'm skeptical that the expanded audience is what Microsoft is going after. Their efforts to court this group have so far been earnest but dismal. Their unveiling of Natal itself did not demonstrate that they've learned much since then, as the software they showed off does not strike me as the type of thing that people throughout the world will cheerfully shell out cash for. Is it possible that they'll unveil new, legitimate challengers in the next few months before Natal's release? Certainly it's possible. Is it probable that they'll suddenly understand something that no one but Nintendo has been able to so far (and even they've had their missteps)? I would argue strongly that the answer is "no": if they had, they would have shown the world more than a new way to use Microsoft Paint and an improved version of Seamen. But let us look at what they did show, software-wise. Natal took up twenty of their ninety minutes: the rest of their conference was spent showing off games like Rock Band, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Alan Wake, Halo, and more of the same titles that they've been pushing since they entered the console market. Even with their first-party software, they did not make even a token effort to say that their core titles will be adopting any new values, as Nintendo did when it talked about its core titles at the Wii's launch. The proof is in the pudding: Microsoft spent the vast majority of its conference targeting the same audience that Sony did, has not demonstrated any intention of altering its core titles to adopt to the new values, and has not shown any software that the expanded audience would care about as more than a novelty (the same applies to Sony, by the way). If they're truly shifting towards making the 360 itself invisible, they did a poor job of showing it at E3. I submit that neither Sony nor Microsoft are really changing course in any serious way, and that their new controllers will not see significant enough support, from first OR third-parties, to significantly alter the course of this generation. What of the Sky service? Direct downloads? Twitter/Facebook? Also think to the audience, they were selling the Xbox 360 platform as it exists to their current market. They only showed technologies and concepts which they thought applied to their E3 audience. They learnt that harsh lesson last year with You're in the movies etc. They did not even try to show off something like 100 vs 1 which is closest to Nintendos realm in both execution and market dynamics, and that is closer to release than most of the games they showed. Even Nintendo finds that the audience they show to at E3 are different from the audience that buys their games, they get criticised for it. |
I feel that I have lost Tim, I hope to get Tim back one day as Tim is my hero. 
Tease.
