WiiBoard discussion

[Bodhesatva]

Legend11 said:

The WiiBoard is a great idea and It makes me wonder why Microsoft can't come up with ideas like that. Hopefully it gets some skateboarding, surfing, and other games that use it. Wii fit will be huge since things dealing with weightloss are big sellers but it'll be interesting to see how the game itself does in the long term and if it keeps people's interest and actually helps them to become fit.

Stange that so far and very likely for all of E3 that the board is the thing that caught my attention the most, it might be truly revolutionary and stands the chance of profoundly influencing future hardware and game design just like the Wii Remote.

Microsoft can, they definitely can, but most of their innovations are behind the scenes I think. From all articles I've read, Microsoft's best and most creative abilities in this market are with developer relations -- they know how to appeal to developers (for example, they had the lowest take per copy-of-a-game of any of the three makers last generation, at 7 dollars per game. This considerably boosted third party profits. I have no idea if MS still leads in this category, because those numbers haven't been released to my knowledge for this generation) and they know how to make an OS that is simple and easy for game developers to use. 

There's a reason why MS has the most exclusive titles announced for their system, and we all know about all the problems people have with PS3 ports. It may not mean much from our perspective, but that's because it's hard to appreciate the fact that Mass Effect (as an example) is a third party exclusive because of MS's finesse, simply because we weren't there to see the negotiations occur.