http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/
Malstrom: Hello there, Mr. Hardcore.
Hardcore: Hi, Malstrom! He he he!
Malstrom: You seem excited, Mr. Hardcore! By golly, you can smile! You have been depressed this entire generation. Why are you so suddenly happy?
Hardcore: It is because of the new motion controls! Now I get to play motion controlled games in high definition! I get to play real games with motion controls! Gamers’ games! Not games for grandma!
Malstrom: Oh?
Hardcore: Imagine all the games that will be unleashed with high definition gaming and motion controls! The poor Wii… It was nice that the Wii popularized motion controls. But now, it is time for the real gamers on the HD systems to use it as it should be.
Malstrom: But Mr. Hardcore, you are forgetting something.
Hardcore: What! I never forget anything.
Malstrom: Last generation, the Gamecube, PlayStation 2, and the Xbox were all fairly similar. Add in the PC, and you had four platforms to port games.
Hardcore: Yes, yes, I know my history! I am a hardcore gamer you know.
Malstrom: When the Wii took the direction it did, it differentiated itself from the other platforms. A game can easily be ported from PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. But it is difficult to do so with the Wii because it isn’t a HD machine and has motion controls.
Hardcore: This is very true! So what is your point? What am I forgetting?
Malstrom: If these motion controls come out at the time they say, and do what they are supposed to, and even sell to the public, consider the ramifications. The porting coalition between PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 becomes shattered. Motion control games cannot be ported to the PC because the PC will never have such controls. And with how different the motion controls are between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, games cannot be ported between them. Of the motion controls, Wii and PlayStation 3 are most similar since they use similar technologies.
Hardcore: What are you saying?
Malstrom: I am saying that your dreams of high definition motion control games are never going to come to fruition. High definition games are very expensive to make. They need other platforms to port. There will be few, if any, high definition motion control games that are ‘hardcore’. The only games that would be made on these motion systems would be old games with new controls tacked on, like Burnout with moving your hands around to steer. The rest will be low budget games designed for grandma.
Hardcore: Noooo!!!!!
Malstrom: And worse, with a shattered porting market for motion control games, since motion control IS the future, third parties will drift toward the console that is cheapest to develop and has the largest install base: Wii.
Hardcore: Aaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!!! The Hardcore runs away screaming… his world forever shattered.
Malstrom approaches the center of the stage. In his mouth, a cigar glows red with smoke.
Malstrom: This is how the old gaming industry ended, not with a crash of the market, but the whimper of hardcore dreams. The Red Ocean way of thinking ends us not just in a flood of blood, with blubbering red ink spewing from financial fountains as it runs down the streets, but in the shattering and continual break up of platforms necessary to sustain the continual skyrocketing cost for gaming. But from this colossal wreckage, a new game industry is rising. You see it not just with the Wii and DS. You see it in flash games. You see it in digital entertainment that is not exactly ‘games’. It is the creative destruction predicted by economist Schumpeter. In order to revolutionize the games industry, it must be disrupted, it must fall in order to rise.
But one thing remains certain: Nintendo will forever be ‘doomed’. Some things just never change.
