The_Yoda said:
sundin13 said:
The way I see it, innovation is largely utilizing the potential of an idea moreso than popularity (although popularity as I said before often allows the potential to be utilized better). If you want to say "the first person who used motion controls innovated and everyone after is just copying", then from what I can tell, give all the credit to Datasoft back in 1981 for the "Le Stick" controller for the Atari 2600 or maybe some Arcade games even before that. I personally don't think that makes any sense because clearly, what was brought to the table through the Wii utilized the potential of motion controls much more fully. The same can be said of the Eyetoy. While the tech itself may be "innovative" (although I'd have to look into that), the utilization didn't tap into that potential to the same level as the Wii. Because of that, I'd say that Nintendo innovated with the Wii at least in how they used motion controls. Its kind of like if someone built a plane, but only used it as a fan for a few years and then someone else came in and started flying. Sure, the tech was already there, but the utilization was still innovative.
|
I just looked it up and i will concede that you are correct based on this definition of innovate :
"make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products."
By this definition then the big 3 are all innovating anytime they implement something with a slight change for example "pressing down on the analog stick for R3/L3" should be considered an innovation, adding a second analog stick would be innovation, moving the second analog stick off center would be innovative. Previously I would have said they were just refining someone else's innovation but I guess I would have been wrong.
So Le Stick created motion controls and the WiiMote was the innovation.
|
I think that there is a bit of a bar for what can be considered "innovation". A change needs to be of a certain magnitude (although this is technically unquantifiable) in order to be considered "innovation proper" and not just "technically innovation". Basically, we get tiers of "innovation" that would look something like this:
-Stagnation: No change
-Iteration: Small improvements which do not change the overall gameplay experience (ie, Clickable sticks)
-Evolution: Larger changes which noticably improve the overall gameplay experience (ie, Second Analog stick)
-Revolution: Large changes which go down a seperate path of gameplay experience (ie, Motion controls)
When someone says "only Nintendo innovates with their hardware", I think using context clues one could assume that they are saying "only Nintendo revolutionarily innovates with their hardware".
