| Reasonable said: [...] That's how I see it. At lauch, I see four groups Natal/Arc can sell to:
1 - existing owners as a seperate peripheral. Both MS and Sony should be able to see some okay sales here if the games & hook is strong enough. MS has the bigger install base but Sony already has EyeToy customers and possibly (but only possibly) a slightly better existing demographic to appeal to with LBP, etc. Pretty much even chances I'd say for MS/Sony to do okay. Of course, this does zero to advance their console install base but does help the new peripherals gain and audience. 2 - existing Wii owners. Well, I see this as a dead end, and a worrying one for MS/Sony. If you have a Wii and are fine with it why would you buy a 360/PS3 to get their motion controls? Natal or Arc would have to have games and a hook that way eclipsed the Wii to even snag a fraction of the Wii only install base IMHO, and I just don't see either achieving that. The problem is that the Wii already has the largest install base for the types of games that use motion controls. 3 - people who don't have a 360/PS3/Wii but who decide Natal / Arc is the thing for them rather than the Wii. This seems a tough sell for MS/Sony as well. As with 2) above they'd need games, marketing and a hook to divert a reasonable (sorry!) percentage of the Wii's current weekly demand away from the Wii to them instead. This seems a tall order to me currently. 4 - force Natal/Arc on new 360/PS3 owners. This, next to 1) above, is the most likely option, but potentially the most costly/risky for both MS/Sony. Put Natal/Arc in the box and force every new 360/PS3 owner to take it. Both the 360 and PS3 are selling well each week and every one of those could have a controller included. The issue is do they make it mandatory or a special bundle? If a special bundle then we'll see the real demand but it allows for people who really only want a 360/PS3 on the same terms as today to bypass Natal / Arc and reduce their acceptance in the market. If they make it all consoles have the motion controls then they will either need to absorb the cost to keep prices the same or raise the price of the PS3/360 to include the new motion controls (I'm assuming here for example that the 360 would sell exactly as today for controllers, etc plus Natal, and the same for the PS3 which would ship with a Dualshock plus EyeToy plus Wand (Arc, whatever).
To get the most marketshare right away I believe both MS/Sony would need to make the new controllers mandatory and try to keep the price point close to where it is now as well as offer the devices at a fairly low cost to existing owners. Even then, unless the new devices produce an actual boost to underlying demand, the consoles will simply sell the same as they do now except they'll include some additional control devices. I guess we'll see soon enough, but releasing this late when a competitor arguably already 'owns' the core demographic you're tyring to reach is a very tall order in terms of achieving large sales success.
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I agree. I'd just add that thanks to its free body feature, Natal could struggle in some genres, but it could also carve for itself two potentially big niches with fitness and dance games.
