Malstrom: Microsoft has lost control of the NATAL hype

[stof]

Legend11 said:

As for Steven Spielberg I want to ask you, do you think it would have been better for Microsoft to have gone with Will Wright or Richard Garriot instead?  Do you think it would have gotten as many headlines or had as much weight with the mass casual audience and non-gamers?  Do you think that when Oprah was showing Wii Fit that her credibility with the gaming industry mattered?

As for what the Wii Fit crowd is going to buy, how do you know what they're going to buy in the future?  Seriously unless you show me some kind of poll or whatever that backs you up I'm going to say you're just pulling that out of your ass.  From my perspective and I'm not stating this as fact but as an observation, the fitness industry is so big because people tend to continue buying new products every year.  I've yet to see someone buy an Ab Roller for instance and then never buy another piece of fitness equipment again.

Isn't that kind of the point about this article though, Legend? That Microsoft went for headlines but didn't really provide any actual substance for the story that one would expect to find right underneath that headline? Microsoft says "Hey, look at this amazing piece of technology we've got, even Steven Spielberg likes it" and then gives us no evidence at all that the thing will actually be useful as a gaming device. If you're going to show off a piece of equipment that has no known release date or retail software (either working or planned) and is probably even a work in progress, you really do need to prove that it has a point if you want anyone to get excited for it. This article suggests that they really aren't at the point where they should be bringing out Spielberg, they're at the point where they should probably bring out a game designer who can say "This is how we can actually use the thing!" Because so far, the most impressive part of their unvealing wasn't the camera itself, but how those two people were able to make that funky Elephant shape. And we don't need a camera for that, we can do that with a lightbulb and a sheet.