Waggle War 2: Nintendo against the world. My answer to Malstrom.

[Erik Aston]

Sony is still reeling. The idea that purple wands are designed to take advantage of M+ makes sense, but that alone is not a strategy to beat Wii. I don't think Sony have had a single cohesive strategy since they drove Kutaragi out. They may be able to get great games on their platform still, but Kutaragi's old strategy was about using their leadership in videogames to "take over the living room." Now they are out of leadership, and all the great games in the world don't help against blue ocean strategy. I think PSP Go was their stronger showing, since it isn't simply in DS' wake, but searching for some sort of new advantage.

As a gaming platform, Natal is nothing until it has some games. If it really has higher ambitions, to "take over the living room," the question is how do they plan to push widespread adoption. Their customers don't necesarily have to be consumers in that case, and XBox360 may or may not be involved at all. And their competitor in that case is not necesarily Nintendo, who don't have those ambitions. Even in a world where Microsoft owns a connected TV interface/OS monopoly, they aren't necesarily in position to kill console gaming any more than they are now with a PC OS monopoly.

I think that Microsoft presented Natal with the timing and in the manner that they did for the express purpose of "winning E3." I would assume they have big ambitions for it too, but they know that one of the biggest ways they can take the fight to Nintendo is by winning over the media, and people's hearts and minds, even if they won't have a product for a long time.

And btw, Nintendo's responce to all of this has already been announced. Nintendo very deliberately "hides their strategy in plain sight" as they did with the Vitality Sensor announcement. When motion controls become a red ocean, their intention is to leave. It doesn't matter if Sony or Microsoft CAN come up with a Wii Sports killer in 2010, if Nintendo is on to the next big thing (whether VS is the next big thing or not).

Further, M+ is not about the "core" in terms of pre-Wii existing customers. It is about building a higher-end part of their new market. One of the best signs Nintendo could ever hope for is EA Sports Active. Their big problem for awhile has been that third parties are "birdmen" and have put out really crappy knockoffs of Nintendogs, Brain Age and Wii Sports. There were a bunch of crappy Wii Fit knockoffs too, but EA Sports Active is not one, and Peter Moore is not a birdman. If EA can sell 5-10 million fitness games on Wii every year, and Activision and Ubisoft make serious entries into that market, Wii could gain the type of unbeatable momentum that PS2 had last gen, in that one piece of the market, regardless of Sony or MS siphoning similar experiences to their systems.