Sorry about that: I'll break up my responses.
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 see what you're saying (i.e. that Motion+ is more for the core, not expanded, audience), but I can't agree with that position at all. First, Nintendo is the one who created Motion+, and I find it revealing that their flagship Motion+ title isn't a "core" franchise like Metroid, but rather a sequel to the expanded audience title, Wii Sports. If Motion+ was more about the core than the expanded audience, why wasn't Zelda their premier title? More importantly, why is it that the new Zelda only "might" have Motion+, if the peripheral were truly targeted towards the core gamer?
Moreover, I think we must remember the environment in which Motion+ was unveiled. Its introduction was rushed (its E3 debut came after less than six months of development) to counter the heavily rumored Microsoft and Sony motion controllers, controllers which Nintendo feared were meant to attack its grip on the expanded audience. Recall, for instance, how Reggie's speech opened with an oblique reference to rivals' motion controllers...a reference that was completely hollow in light of what actually happened! In fact, that entire conference was designed to counter such an occasion. Wii Music, Animal Crossing, playing frisbee with a virtual dog...these are not tactics you use to entice the "hardcore" gamers amongst us.
Further supporting this is the fact that Resort (and thereby Motion+) were the only games covered at the conference that were not going to be launched within six months: considering how incomplete the game was at the time, why make such an exception? And if Motion+ wasn't a defensive maneuver, why announce it before Microsoft's conference, rather than wait until your own? Were Motion+ really an attempt by Nintendo to entice Microsoft and Sony's install base, Nintendo would not have thrown Motion+ out there so suddenly and cavalierly; they would have had big-name, core games announced, and they would have let at least some third-parties in on the secret (so as to have more core titles ready). Motion+ was a panicked response to a perceived threat to the expanded audience; even though third-parties are utilizing it for core games, Nintendo did not originally mean for it to primarily entice the core gamer.
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.
This is an interesting theory, and it certainly has a ring of truth to it. Domination of the living room was always Microsoft's ultimate goal in entering gaming, and you put forth a compelling case that these steps are meant to arrive at that destination. Where the disagreement lies is that this means that "Microsoft wants to step into the turf of the original Wii." What you've outlined is the publically and of-repeated goal of Sony, who wanted to use gaming as an entry to controlling all of your entertainment needs. The Wii's philosophy is the polar opposite: gaming comes first, with all other features being complimentary to that goal. If you change your statement to "Microsoft wants to step into the turft of the original Playstation," I couldn't agree more.
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.
I'm not at all convinced that Sony expected Nintendo to succeed where it itself would fail, for two main reasons.
First, remember that the decision to can motion controls was made long before this generation started, and long before Nintendo unveiled its Wiimote. Were Sony truly just waiting for Nintendo to pioneer a trail that it could later follow, they would have to have an excellent industrial espionage program (to know that Nintendo was seriously considering motion technology as the mainstay of its next system) and an incredible amount of foresight (to know that motion controls would successfully take off in the face of the many naysayers, that Nintendo's initial controller would be followed with Motion+, and that third-parties would be willing to embrace a peripheral made by Nintendo, of all companies). The former is unlikely, as Nintendo's pretty damn good at keeping a secret. The latter is very unlikely: Sony and foresight haven't gone together this generation. This theory requires far too many unlikely conditions to be true, in my opinion.
The second issue is that Sony would have to believe that Nintendo would be more successful at pushing something than Sony could be, a belief that would defy most predictions at the time Sony would have had to make this decision (2005). Recall that Sony was successful in pushing the CD format on gaming (contrary to Nintendo's direction), then the DVD format (again contrary to Nintendo, who went with a mini-disc format), then the PSP (which was doing very, very well against the DS at the time).
Starting with its entry into gaming, everything Sony touched was golden, while Nintendo's share of gaming kept declining over time ("Is Nintendo going third-party next gen?" was not an uncommon article). Its highly unlikely that in 2005, when the decision would have been made, Sony would sit back and think "we need for Nintendo to do this for us before we can take the next step." At the time, Sony was flush with cash from gaming and had a track record that no one could touch, while Nintendo was supposed to be down and out. Indeed, Sony figured it could use its brandname alone to push the incredibly pricey Blu-Ray and Cell technologies on consumers and developers, an attitude which belies any claim that Sony was resource-strapped or ambivalent about its influence on gaming.
Part two to follow!
