| bouzourikis said: It’s a matter of marketing. And marketing is not only advertisement. A company has to define its target market, recognize its needs and finally make an offering. Wii is a brilliant case of successful marketing. Microsoft on the other hand, has a strategic goal. They want to place their device to the living room and control the services which they offer to their customers. That’s the reason XBOX doesn’t include a web browser. They offer video on demand, communication and soon they may offer a form of online shopping. Natal doesn’t aim to gaming. Image processing needs enormous computational power and current HD games could not run. Natal is a way to interact with your TV. You can give voice commands to change channels. Imagine how it would be to shop clothes via XBOX and trying them on a 3d model of yourself. So, even though Natal may help console sales, it may not help games sales. |
^^This here is a very profound post. After Malstrom made the connection between Natal and Surface (not that both are vaporware, i don't really think that, just that he connected the two ideas together), and then watching a vid about Surface, i really think that Natal is meant to succeed where Surface failed to materialize. The non-gaming applications of Natal they showed were incredibly similar to the images they promoed for Surface, so i think that with the move with Natal, the gaming applications are just the hook to draw people in, the revolution in interface is what they're trying to sell you.
In this vein, it could be seen as the spiritual successor to Surface, something infinitely more practical, because its only $200, and will probably be less when it comes out, and just hooks into the TV (of course, via the 360), instead of a $10,000 behemoth you have to clumsily install into a table.
It could even be that the gaming applications of surface become peripheral to the interface possibilities, and Microsoft will speedily introduce this for Windows, or even adopt this to a powerful counterweight to Apple TV, and the gaming will remain a side-interest (just like gaming was merely a side venture to help them with their main struggles)
As for Sony, i think it's too early to really factor in their strategy. At least wait until we see something that they claim is a finished product.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
