When you look at Gamerankings aggregate review scores so far in 2009 there have been as many 75% or higher games as there were released in 2007, and it is very likely that we will see (up to) twice as many of these titles released over the remainder of the year. While aggregate review scores are not a good measure of quality, the increase in quality indicated by the increase in the number of highly rated games is probably an indication that games are increasing in quality. Being that this is caused by both an increase in focus from third party publishers and an increased ability to use motion controls in a meaningful way I think it is difficult to associate the quality difference to either factor with certainty.

More accurate and expressive motion controlls that are available through Wii MotionPlus and Sony's motion controller will (most likely) have a much more dramatic learning curve associated with them; and Nintendo (and third party developers focused on the Wii) will start off in a better position to use them (because of their experience with the Wiimote) and will have 18 to 24 months of lead time, and will have (potentially) completed a full Wii MotionPlus game before any of Sony's developers begin their products.

Still, the more damaging thing for (at least) the first wave of games for these add-ons is that any large, complicated or expensive game developed for them will be designed to use the conventional controller to play these games. While you will be seeing second-generation MotionPlus games that are designed to use the capabilities of the motion controller to its potential, the PS3 and XBox 360 add-ons will be seeing a handful of button-actions replaced with the same kind of motion controlls that first generation Wii games had.

^Still, there's no evidence that Wii developers acquired any valuable know-how on motion control, up to this point in time. Gestures hardly have any depth that game designers must fathom.

Still, I can't see all the difference between WM+ and wands or Natal controls. Developers will have to choose on how much they want to go all out on complex motion controls, and how that reflects on traditional control schemes for the same game. That will be true for the next Zelda as much as it could be true for GTA5 if Sony decided to offer some money and developers to implement extra motion control based features.

Yes, some devs will have about 12 months of a head start with WM+ (the devkits by Sony and MS are out there yet), but the exact hardware used is almost immaterial. Once EA codes WM+ controls into one of their games, porting it to Sony wands will be trivial. The design part when it comes to integrating that kind of controls into gameplay is what is hard, and that is the same for any console.

I still agree with him for the most part. I think he has gained enough credibility by predicting well ahead of time how this generation would pan out with the DS and the Wii. And please don't come and say he guessed it or something stupid like that. He put together well-thought out business strategy and explained things.

Now I don't know if what he is saying now will be proven true but what he writes makes sense. Maybe it just hits too close to home for some of you but be honest, it's all concept at the moment. Its nothing like where Wii sports was demoed and there were legions of convinced people about how it works. Nothing was forced on people or left to people's imagination. The hype was real.

That's the point ... deciding when and where to use motion controls has been a consideration for 4 years for Nintendo developers, and higher detailed MotionPlus controls for 2 to 3 years by the time Sony and Microsoft release their first game. To make matters worse, developers will not be able to design a tennis game (as an example) that targets a decent userbase for these new systems that actually allows a user to control the direction of the ball using the motion controlls; they will have to choose a potential large userbase or implement meaningful motion controlls. Nintendo doesn't have this problem.

And most of you don't even understand what he's saying. The topic alone sets you off. That's worse than him. He at least gives credit where its due. When he talks about Spielberg's endorsement not being important, he's talking more about pedigree in the game industry not as an individual or as a celebrity.

Also try and understand what disruption and blue ocean mean before calling Natal a disruption of Nintendo. Natal, a disruption, hah I laugh. Its at best a birdman strategy(a me too strategy). The controls don't yet work like anything they've described and as interesting as it may sound on paper or in your heads, that's the truth

He's not so anti-Sony or microsoft as some of you might think. This is the one who bashed Nintendo for their errors during the GC, N64 and to a lesser extent the SNES. He's always talked about business strategy and trying to highlight successful ones. He alludes a lot to Apple, and especially Sony for the PS1 and 2 eras. So he is mostly just saying that nintendo did the right things this generation and tries to explain what these things are and what the others are doing wrong for now.
Guys, seriously you should take a look at his main website and try and read an article a day or something. You might just learn something.

How did we go from 12 months headstart to 2-3 years? And how are we supposing that it takes a sizeable slice of those 12 months for good first party teams to learn to make good use of motion controls?

And how is the split userbase a problem for Sony's wands and Natal, but not for WM+?

First things first: when I read the post for the first time, I misread Pachter in place of Malstrom and I was shocked, how could it be he suddenly wrote intelligent things?
Then , I realized my mistake and reality came back to normality
But then I noticed that as usual Malstrom always writes intelligent things, but he manages almost every time to ruin everything by being a turd.
And I couldn't help thinking Malstrom rants suggest he's really persuaded to be indispensable for Nintendo.
I can agree that MS hyping so much, with the help of the media, a tech that's still far from actual release, is questionable, but attacking in such a rude way Molineux and other developers wasn't justifiable.

Also, selling hardware at a loss was nothing new. Sega selling the megadrive at a loss whas the reason that it could compete with the Super Nintendo.

No one has been able to prove this. Do you have an article stating this?

Its a fact that genesis is less powerfull and was made 2 years before the SNES. Yet it was always around the same price range, if maybe 50 dollars cheper. So it should have been cheaper to make...

Combined with the fact that Sega CD was sold at 299 (for a profit) and 32X was sold for 149 (for a profit) and Sega Saturn was sold for 399 (for a profit UNTIL sony cut the price on them to 299 and then cut it agian to 199 a year later.

And Dreamcast was launched at 199 in NA which was at cost...which was the main reason Bernie Stolar was fired by Sega of Japan. They wanted it sold for 249 and a profit.

I think its safe to say that Genesis was sold at cost if not a slight profit no?