For those who want to jump straight to Move/Natal talk:
WW: I doubt they’ll have the same impact the Wii had. In some sense, they feel like evolutions, or evolutionary technologies. I think Natal feels like a better EyeToy, which is going to have some interesting applications. I don’t think it’s going to change the face of gaming or anything. I think that having motion control, like in a Wii controller, is something that both Microsoft and Sony are catching up to, but again it almost suggests certain toy-like applications. I’m not sure I’d want to use a Wii controller for a first-person shooter. Even as obvious as this might sound to you, you want to point something at the screen when you’re shooting, but just the precision of the technology is below the precision I would get with a mouse on a PC, for instance. That’s something that Nintendo has always been very, very good at... in some sense when they design something, they work from the controller outwards and they may show the kinesthetic second to second experience with the control scheme is first and foremost when they work on a new game. The feel of Mario jumping has to be just right, and then they base the rest of the game around that.
IG: The thing that interests me is that it’s almost as if Microsoft and Sony are trying to capture that audience that is familiar with the Wii and they’re hedging their bets that maybe some of these Wii owners will actually upgrade. As you said, it almost feels like an evolution of the Wii controls, so they’re hoping that some of these people will actually upgrade from a Wii to an Xbox 360 or to a PS3 to check that out. Do you see that actually happening? I think the more casual audience might not want to spend that money.
WW: I think at some point it becomes the feature that a lot of people enjoy and they value it, so now it becomes just something on the list they have to check off. Do you have online capabilities? Check. Do you motion control? Check. So I think that Nintendo has basically ratcheted up what’s expected in a modern gaming platform, and now Sony and Microsoft basically feel like they have to add that to their checklist.
I very much agree with the bolded.
