What if Nintendo's "Answer" to Microsoft and Sony's motion controllers isn't a device for a home console? What if Nintendo's DS replacement is announced at the next E3 (before Sony and Microsoft release their add-ons) and is a mind blowing re-imagining of a handheld gaming device?What if this device interacted with the Wii in a way that re-ignited people's interest in the Wii in a way that an add on device never could?

I ask this because far too many people get far too caught up in the "Console Wars" and have to respond to a "threat" in a symetrical fashion; which isn't (necessarily) true.

Noname: I think its best we find as many points of mutual understanding as possible, and make sure we agree on what 'expanded market' means or at least understand what it means to each other.

For me the Nintendo expanded market philosophy means that a game has the lowest barriers to entry possible on the low competency side of the market, its gameplay mechanics help create an enjoyable experience which aren't limited by being say too stressful or violent or difficult, and involves genres and play mechanics which are enjoyable to everyone. Wii Sports Resort for me is designed to raise the competency people introduced to Wii Motion+ for the first time, its first and foremost for me an upstreaming tool designed to get people to a basic level of play to enjoy other games better. Its Wii mote school of fun essentially. Consider Wii Sports the original. It had constant reminders about putting the strap on your wrist to protect yourself and others, it forced you to become familiar with the basic A/B buttons on the remote with the ready screens, it made the most popular game -> Wii Tennis require people to click the menu buttons heaps to get people familiar with the pointer interface. So for Nintendo its a neccessary game, but it doesn't indicate their focus with Wii Motion + IMO.

Moreover, I think we must remember the environment in which Motion+ was unveiled. Its introduction was rushed (its E3 debut came after less than six months of development) to counter the heavily rumored Microsoft and Sony motion controllers, controllers which Nintendo feared were meant to attack its grip on the expanded audience. Recall, for instance, how Reggie's speech opened with an oblique reference to rivals' motion controllers...a reference that was completely hollow in light of what actually happened! In fact, that entire conference was designed to counter such an occasion. Wii Music, Animal Crossing, playing frisbee with a virtual dog...these are not tactics you use to entice the "hardcore" gamers amongst us.

Further supporting this is the fact that Resort (and thereby Motion+) were the only games covered at the conference that were not going to be launched within six months: considering how incomplete the game was at the time, why make such an exception? And if Motion+ wasn't a defensive maneuver, why announce it before Microsoft's conference, rather than wait until your own? Were Motion+ really an attempt by Nintendo to entice Microsoft and Sony's install base, Nintendo would not have thrown Motion+ out there so suddenly and cavalierly; they would have had big-name, core games announced, and they would have let at least some third-parties in on the secret (so as to have more core titles ready). Motion+ was a panicked response to a perceived threat to the expanded audience; even though third-parties are utilizing it for core games, Nintendo did not originally mean for it to primarily entice the core gamer.

You make some very good points here. You're right that the response was rushed, they may have wanted to wait until this year to properly unveil the interface. I would say the reason why there were no core games announced at the same time was that none were ready. However what speaks volumes is how quickly they got involved with EA and their unprecedented up until this point willingness to get on board in a very 'Microsoftish' way, even going so far as to bundle Wii M+ with EA titles. Where I feel differently is why they responed as they have. Expanded market is a position of strength for them, Coreward moves towards a position of weakness. They have no big core games like Microsoft/Sony have and a strong response could derail their efforts to upstream and introduce a long term problem for them.

Controlling half the market is insufficient, and it weakens their longer term prospects. Both Sony and Microsoft are entrenched coreward just as they are entrenched towards the expanded market side. If either Sony, Microsoft or both were able to prevent them from upstreaming their market then it gives them a systematic problem. Its a long term stalemate which puts them at a disadvantage the next time they play the console game. Their weakness is fighting something like Xbox Live, because that service is a social network and it locks consumers to a particular console make. Long term they do not want to graduate a new breed of gamers to either a Microsoft or Sony console, and if they are prevented from moving upstream thats the risk that they face.

The reason why I feel that Motion + is more coreward than expanded market is because of what it means for the games. Whilst it helps make the Wiimote respond better overall, its best uses are for games which involve violence, and or skill. Games which have a higher barrier for entry anyway. Its to keep up with people as they graduate beyond simpler games like Wii Sports and onto actual tennis games when they want something more. Thats the reason why they announced the third party motion + games at their conference, they want to keep the answer to the question 'where will I find the most fun and engaging games' to always be Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft have such core games and they can retrofit their games after the fact to serve such a purpose. However they don't have the interface so the threat is limited until they do. If one of them managed to kick a new interface off, they immediately have a next generation Wii. They can do in the next generation what Nintendo did in this generation and simply update their hardware and software for existing technology to cater to a new interface and audience.

This is an interesting theory, and it certainly has a ring of truth to it. Domination of the living room was always Microsoft's ultimate goal in entering gaming, and you put forth a compelling case that these steps are meant to arrive at that destination. Where the disagreement lies is that this means that "Microsoft wants to step into the turf of the original Wii." What you've outlined is the publically and of-repeated goal of Sony, who wanted to use gaming as an entry to controlling all of your entertainment needs. The Wii's philosophy is the polar opposite: gaming comes first, with all other features being complimentary to that goal. If you change your statement to "Microsoft wants to step into the turft of the original Playstation," I couldn't agree more.

I would have to agree with you mostly here, however between the PS1 and Wii there are some striking similarites. The Wii does have a purpose outside of gaming as well, its a lifestyle machine. If Sony has the goal of making the machine into a media centre, then the Nintendo version is the expanded view of this. That means less focus on strictly media operation and more focus on lifestyle features to get people to use the Wii constantly. Things like the weather, news, BBC channels are features you cannot ignore. Im drawing on an old interview with Miyamoto I think. The fact that they ignore physical media doesn't mean that they are ignoring the lifestyle aspects as well. They simply chose to spend time on features which are more important than say physical media playback. Media playback for them is red ocean, there are many competing solutions, but theres no competing solution to what they went for.

I'm not at all convinced that Sony expected Nintendo to succeed where it itself would fail, for two main reasons.

First, remember that the decision to can motion controls was made long before this generation started, and long before Nintendo unveiled its Wiimote. Were Sony truly just waiting for Nintendo to pioneer a trail that it could later follow, they would have to have an excellent industrial espionage program (to know that Nintendo was seriously considering motion technology as the mainstay of its next system) and an incredible amount of foresight (to know that motion controls would successfully take off in the face of the many naysayers, that Nintendo's initial controller would be followed with Motion+, and that third-parties would be willing to embrace a peripheral made by Nintendo, of all companies). The former is unlikely, as Nintendo's pretty damn good at keeping a secret. The latter is very unlikely: Sony and foresight haven't gone together this generation. This theory requires far too many unlikely conditions to be true, in my opinion.

The second issue is that Sony would have to believe that Nintendo would be more successful at pushing something than Sony could be, a belief that would defy most predictions at the time Sony would have had to make this decision (2005). Recall that Sony was successful in pushing the CD format on gaming (contrary to Nintendo's direction), then the DVD format (again contrary to Nintendo, who went with a mini-disc format), then the PSP (which was doing very, very well against the DS at the time).

Starting with its entry into gaming, everything Sony touched was golden, while Nintendo's share of gaming kept declining over time ("Is Nintendo going third-party next gen?" was not an uncommon article). Its highly unlikely that in 2005, when the decision would have been made, Sony would sit back and think "we need for Nintendo to do this for us before we can take the next step." At the time, Sony was flush with cash from gaming and had a track record that no one could touch, while Nintendo was supposed to be down and out. Indeed, Sony figured it could use its brandname alone to push the incredibly pricey Blu-Ray and Cell technologies on consumers and developers, an attitude which belies any claim that Sony was resource-strapped or ambivalent about its influence on gaming.

I think people tend to underestimate what the PS3 is and blame Sony for things which weren't neccessarily their fault. They faced many challenges in creating the PS3. The PS3 is a red ocean product, it has to be good enough to compete with their previous generation PS2 and get the people with that console to upgrade. The PS3 was a victim of the success of the PS2 and of Microsoft. Everyone knew the accessibility of the control schemes were a problem, which is why the Sony mote and PS eye existed. However they faced a problem, its difficult to change a successful formula and update it for the times. Its the same issue the new muscle cars faced like the Mustang when they were introduced to the market. The PS3 faced challenges from pretty much every angle, Blu Ray had to compete with the fact that HDTV adoption was incomplete, had to compete with DVD which is considered by many people to be 'good enough' and Microsoft played dirty.

What Microsoft did was so damaging to the PS3 it will never recover. Microsoft played a brilliant game, a game called 'punk the PS3'. What they did was so subtle and yet so damaging that it made Sony look like complete idiots. They dragged Sony around by the nose and beat them at their own game. The very nature of what the HD consoles are today is the result of Microsofts game. Sony introduced the PS3 as a Blu Ray player with a HDD. Microsoft introduced the Arcade to stop developers from taking advantage of the format and to expose the weakness of the Blu Ray drive which required a fixed cost of the HDD on top of the optical media. Microsoft released early, and forced Sony to release early as well with a slower drive than they would have liked, at a higher cost and prevented them from using a faster optical drive. Microsoft released core games early and when Sony finally responded to games like Gears of War it was too late. It was only when they started playing their own game that they actually started seeing real success. They were willing to lose billions, but they had a strategy to get the money back with Xbox Live. Sony doesn't have that luxury.

What I was meaning for Motion + is that Sony could not respond to the Wiimote after the fact. They could however respond to Wii motion +, see above as they have a position of strength in the core market. Sony could not release a Wiimote as its originally designed, they would have been laughed out of the building. They had to be able to release a product which could satisfy both their core and casual markets at once. Nintendo didn't have to, getting 30-40% of the market was a winning strategy for them, Sony had to fight off Microsoft at the same time and for them failure would be anything less than half the market. However now that Wii M+ exists, they can meet them at half way as Nintendo is blazing a trail here so its easy to follow the leader.

You raise a very good point here. They don't have to respond to their competition in that manner. However, in the handheld space they have a very iterative strategy. Gameboy -> gameboy color -> gameboy advance -> Gameboy advance SP-> DS -> DS lite -> DSi. This is because handhelds don't have the physical lifespan of home consoles for various reasons. So based on their previous work the next handheld should be designed as a generational system, like the GBA -> DS transition was. However with the DSi new on the market, it makes it hard to predict when they will release its replacement.

Since they don't seem to release their handhelds and their consoles in the same year and they would not be expected to release a new Wii until 2011, they could definately release a new handheld system in 2010. In many ways it would make sense for them to do that. It would give them up to two years where they could be assured that the Nintendo Wii would not be replaced so they could focus on that system. Also as you said, it could be something that they could tie into the Wii or Wii replacement in some way. Btw, how successful has the PSP/PS3 tie in for Japan been?

I mostly agree with this definition, but I would remove the "low competency" part: to me, it's all about the reduced barriers. It's true that Wii Sports (and Wii Play) were both didactic introductions to how to use motion controls, but not only is that not necessary for them to be expanded audience games (Wii Music and Wii Fit, for instance, lack those entirely), I would actually argue that the marquee expanded audience games of this generation, the Wii _____ line of games, offer a very high degree of difficulty: Sports and Play are centered around multiplayer, which is an inherently competetive genre (it's as hard as your opponent makes it, which can be pretty darn hard!), Fit requires you to have good control over your body to excel in it, and Music demands that the player have actual rhythm and taste (what you get from it is a direct reflection of what you put into it).

Actually, despite Nintendo's reputation to the contrary, they have a very long history working very closely with third-party developers; they've loaned out employees to Capcom (Flagship), worked closely with Factor 5 (the Gamecube's sound system was essentially designed by them) Sega and Namco (the Triforce system). Ubisoft was able to come out of the gate so strongly on the Wii because Nintendo was actively speaking with/helping them with their Wii development. Their working closely with a third-party to push their new tech is far from unprecedented.

I'm also not sure that they're "weak" when it comes to the core gamer: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. are all still huge amongst that group, with each new installment guaranteed to do gangbusters. I'd put their relative failures of the last two generations less on Nintendo not appealing to the core, but to Nintendo (and third-parties) not being able to release enough games to keep the core engaged (the droughts between quality releases could be long and painful: they certainly drove me to buy Playstations each gen.).

Fully granted, and from what I understand this is indeed how disruption is meant to work (i.e. you upstream over time). I'm much less certain than you that social networks are the real obstacle that Nintendo must overcome, since I feel that 95%+ of gamers go where the most compelling games are, and that therefore better games will entice almost every core gamer, but I admit to having no precedent to cite in this regard, so I'll reserve judgment.

I'll agree that Motion+ is more focused on games of skill, but as I wrote earlier, I don't "lack of skill" defines what makes an expanded audience game. For example, take the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES: it was clearly an expanded audience game (it enticed tons of new people to get into gaming), but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it requires little skill. I also stand by my analyses of the Wii _____ line, and add to that the high difficulty level of expanded audience games like Picross and the numerous Sudoku games that have flooded the market. These are not "easy" games by any stretch, but they're still expanded. Resort seems to continue that tradition. Having quibbled with all that, I have to say that Motion+ is also directed towards the core gamer (it's upstreaming): I simply don't think it's something that's mutually exclusive.

You're completely correct here, and I'd even add the new T.V. channel that they're introducing on the Wii as futher support (or going back, the fact that the NES was called the Family Computer in Japan!). The difference to me lies not in the "what" but the "why." Sony and Microsoft want you to use their game machines to play games, but they'd be perfectly happy if you omitted the games and used the console as a pure media hub (they make money either way). Nintendo, by contrast, seems to be adding these bells and whistles to get you to turn the machine on more often, in the hope that this leads you to play (and buy) more games. Note, for example, that while Sony and Microsoft's non-gaming functions often bring in revenue for them, Nintendo's don't (unless they're making money off the weather channel, which I doubt).

I actually feel you're giving Sony far too much credit here. Every decision they made that's hurt them (adding Blu-Ray to jack up the cost to obscene levels, sticking with the old controller but adding tilt, removing rumble, going with the Cell, etc.) was one that they made consciously and deliberately, and judging from their arrogance at the time they felt that they could force these changes on the market (remember "get a second job"?). Yes, they faced challenges, but so too did Nintendo and Microsoft: the difference lies in how they chose to meet those challenges. In this case, Sony responded by shooting itself in the foot time and again. I have little sympathy for Sony in this regard; they were confronted with the future and have so far been found wanting. Considering how much money their decision-makers are paid to be right, I can't shed any tears for them. Harsh, perhaps, but this is the business world, and results are all that matter.

It seems to me that Sony did respond to the Wiimote, but its response was to include Sixaxis support in its current controller, rather than adopt any full-fledged response. I also think that if Sony had released the Remote, rather than Nintendo, the controller would have been accepted by the majority of gamers, especially if Sony came out with games showing off its potential. Sony also has (had?) much more influence amongst third-parties than Nintendo, so I could easily see them forcing developers to make core games for their own remote, rather than the primarily expanded stuff that Nintendo received.

I guess that for me, the deciding factor is that Sony could not feasibly and rationally have expected that the PS3 would ever replicate the success of the PS2 ($600, high difficulty in developing for it, etc.). If that were their intention, they certainly did everything wrong to realize it (see above). That being the case, why would they not take a risk and go with the new controllers? At the very least, do what they're doing now, and release it as a supplementary controller.

The answer is not that their situation wouldn't permit them to do so, but that they simply didn't see how that could work. Recall 2005/2006, and the wide skepticism that the Wii would amount to much of anything, new controller be damned. Recall 2007, and how motion controls were a "fad" that would go away any day now. Recall 2008, when consumers would "graduate" to an HD console any minute now. Sony, along with nearly everyone not named Nintendo, applied the old model of gaming to the market, and consequently figured that the crummy motion controls would go nowhere. I'm not convinced that the Wand was the result of a wait-and-see approach, or even that Sony calculated that the wand would alienate some of its userbase; I see it as a concession that gaming can and will adopt motion controls in the future, so let's get on that bandwagon while we still can.