The news coming out of E3 this week had got me thinking about something I had been wondering about for awhile and I think I finally have an answer. The question I have been pondering for awhile is "Why do companies that create a shift within a market inevitably become a dominant player within the market, and why are they so hard to unseat even by companies with (arguably) 'better', or at least flashier, technology?"

I’m starting to think that the answer to this question is heavily related to what drove each company to produce the product they did.

The companies who created a shift in the market seemed to notice a problem within the market which was limiting growth or (possibly) leading to the inevitable destruction of the market. They then took their understanding of the problem, envisioned the market in a way where it would not be bound by that problem, and built a product to act as a bridge between how the market currently existed and the healthy market they envisioned. In contrast, their competition seems to notice the success they achieved and their response seems to be about fixing a limitation they see in the product; and they seem to have little interest in actually solving the problem that the first company noticed, or even be aware that it exists.

Now, how this relates to the news of this E3 is that Nintendo noticed that the market in Japan was stagnating and theorized that this was caused because the growing complexity in the interactions required to play videogames were acting as a barrier to people playing these games. As anyone who has played modern videogames can tell you, there is some truth to this hypothesis being that some game developers would expect you to use two analogue sticks, press four buttons and juggle a possum to perform simple acts like opening a door. Nintendo’s solution to this problem was the Nintendo DS and Wii which added to the conventional button and analogue stick/digital pad combo with more expressive input devices which allowed for more complicated actions to be performed in more intuitive fashion.

Internally, Nintendo’s awareness of the problem has driven them to design all of their games ("Core" or not) in a way that the new control methods are (almost) always used when they can provide a more intuitive experience for the user; which (in turn) has made the Wii far more accessible to everyone.

Now Microsoft and Sony did not look to motion controls because they saw their own games being limited by conventional controllers, and the only reason they are moving in that direction is because Nintendo has been so successful. We see this in their actions surrounding their new controller as there is no talk about making their next instalments of existing games fully compatible with these new devices. As a result, few games will ever be developed for these input devices and most of those that are will be an attempt to exploit the "Casual" market without understanding it; which will probably result in games which have a patronizing quality to them to the gamers they are trying to attract.

To put it another way, when Microsoft tells us that the next core-instalment of Halo will be designed to require Project Natal, or Sony tells us that Grand Turismo 5 is dropping support for the Sixaxis/Dual Shock 3 in favour of the Purple Wand, I will begin to think they are serious and will be able to take advantage of these technologies to compete directly with the Wiimote/Wii MotionPlus.

To do the amazingly modest act of quoting myself from another thread: