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JaggedSac on 18 January 2010
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Avinash_Tyagi said:
JaggedSac said:
First off, are you under the impression that they are not targeting the casual market first with Natal?

So it is a bad idea to try and extend the 360's audience by providing a unique experience via Natal? Or are you saying it cannot be done due to the fact that MS has already courted the core market and cannot now extend to the casual?

They themselves have stated that core is first.

 

Actually trying to market to their core first is a bad idea, first off the core are the least likely to welcome the new innovation, if they are willing to adopt it, they'll be Wii owners already, secondly core games are the least likely to benefit from the innovation.

 

Now when it comes to reaching the downmarket, yes they'll have a hard time, what is a strength to them in the core market are weaknesses in the downmarket, the downmarket has different values, Nintendo already has learned the lessons of the downmarket, its their strength, but MS and the third parties it depends on so much do not, which is why they have such trouble with that audience, NATAL will reflect those problems in its software selection for the downmarket, and the core will see little benefit to NATAL in their own games.

Let me repost this as you seemed to have missed it:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-hardcore-games-easiest-to-sell

"It's a continuation of a strategy we've been articulating for a long time, which is that we have a powerful piece of hardware that enables a lot of different experiences," he added. "Let's start with the core users to really get their attention and get them invested and committed to us as a platform. Then as we look to broaden to new audiences, we have the hardware capacity and technology innovation to continue to evolve the experience, whether that's by bringing things like Facebook, Netflix and Twitter to give people more reasons to turn the console on, or with Natal in the future, with a more social, casual and interactive controller-free gaming experience that something like Natal brings."

 

They stated the core was marketed first for the 360 as a whole, not Natal.  Natal is one of the things that they are using to broaden the audience.  This was the key part you left out of your earlier post.

 

And I would say Rare might have a good chance to create some compelling software for the down market.  It might just be their time to shine.