I can't help but think the point of this thread was supposed to be... "When Sony and Microsoft have motion controls, Wii is doomed!!!1!!"

I don't think that's the case. Nintendo have M+ out now, they have yet to cut price or bring in new bundles and they're still raking in money and staying ahead in sales.

And as for people deciding what Nintendo will and won't do-don't try it. Before E3 2004, who saw DS and 100million plus sales coming? Who thought Revolution would become Wii and sell 50 million plus? For that matter, in 1994 who thought Nintendo would be hammered by the PlayStation?

We all have the benefit of hindsight, and can go along and say the outcomes were obvious. At the time, they weren't. Just like what Nintendo will do next is not clear cut or easy to predict.

I question this, especially on the Microsoft front. It could merely be their great silence, but i just wonder if Microsoft is going to give this the attention it needs to really get off the ground and thrive. Will it be the Wiimote, or the Balance Board?

I dont think even MS knows the full possibility of Natal as of yet. As we all know they did not develop this tehc in house (MS is not a hardware company) but have aquired it from an Israeli company. I think MS is figuring out what their software can do with this tech before they  start bragging about software.

They have said more about Natal than Sony about their motion tech, despite having a later release date so I dont think we need to question MS willingness to support Natal.

"Will it be the Wiimote, or the Balance Board?"

Natal? Neither. No way Natal will hit 20M+. I'll eat my dog if it does.

That could be the problem there, that they haven't acquired the technology with software in mind, but will try and make software to fit this neat new gadget they have.

And they can do internal tech development when they have a mind. It was rumored long ago that they were designing the CPU for the Next-box in-house.

My 2 cents :P

First while I believe Sony and MS offerings will be good being better at an end of a spectrum doesn't make it better. The effective difference between being blinded by darkness and being blinded by light is essentially the same. You fall over your coffee table because you can't see your jerky friend rearranged your furniture. Natal will do great as an enhancement to the XBox family, but in no means will the controls be a competitor for the Wii. This is probably the best Me Too MS has done since they entered the arena. Sony while having great tracking seems to be reliant on camera and input points for it's motion. This certainly offers great positional tracking. To the field of the camera, who won't play in the field of the camera. I'm also pretty sure it will offer buttons too. Sony offering is certainly a direct entry into the Wiiremote input field.

Will Nintendo move on? yes extend the field, offer better input. Oh yeah they will. What will they come up with next? no idea. One thought is that instead of a "vitaly sensor" on the finger. How about putting a back sensor where the battery plate is. So nothing goes on the finger. This sensing could be be good for ahead of time reactions. I don't think it will predetermine your input direction, but i'm sure something could be figure out. There is more out there. It's all about thinking outside the box. That is a skill that culture and schools like to beat out of people.

Will Nintendo stop innovating because the innovator changes. Nintendo, Sega, Sony? well the point is valid. Most of the time a company innovates because they have an idea and a direction that they(the creator) want to see. The company BOOMS into existence makes TONS of profit. Sets new standards. 10/X years later the company starts to fall into the same rut as the other companies. Why? why did their new creation and direction fail? because the boom causes other people to enter into competition. What the company never realized is it wasn't JUST the idea and direction. It was a NEW DIRECTION AND IDEA with NO COMPETITION. This business philosophy is at the core of Blue Ocean Strategy and Innovators Dilemma/Solution. So right now at this time Nintendo is being lucky they are using the philosophy that the only succesful strategy is the strategy of change.

DS was a success of the breakaway mentality and the Wii was a success of the breakaway mentaility. By all means Nintendo is going to trip, stumble and injure themselves on the new directions, but if they maintain looking at new directions they will find far more massive successes than they will hurt themselves in the long run. Only when Nintendo forgets to change their strategy will other companies pass like the N64/NGC days.

@.jayderyu

You have some interesting ideas there...give nitendo a ring :)

Otherwise you summed up the situation pretty well.

Sony has nothing at this point nintendo does.

It is not what Nintendo has to do it is can Sony do anything

I agree with you about Sega being innovative... but you don't give Nintendo enough credit...

Pocket PC's weren't for gaming man... All I could ever play on one was freakin' snake... But I'll give you that one...

Dual-screen setup (Game & Watch)

Analog Joystick =/= Analog Thumb Stick. An analog stick is much more compact, and is controlled by your thumb for much more accurate movements for the person. The first analog Joystick was in the 60's... in arcades.

Saveable progress - Nintendo (Legend Of Zelda)

D-Pad: Nintendo

+  = -:- Controller layout (VERY COMMON TODAY): Nintendo (SNES)

Multi-colored Buttons: Nintendo

Cross-platform save transfer: Nintendo (GC SD adapter) - 2/3 consoles today

1st-party Wireless controller: Nintendo (WaveBird)

Letter Labels - Nintendo

Triggers - Nintendo

Quality Control (Saved the gaming industy, mind you): Nintendo

Perspective buttons/stick: Nintendo (N64)

4-players: Nintendo

QC Lockouts: Nintendo

DLC?: http://www.n-sider.com/hardwareview.php?hardwareid=16

I'm sure there are more, but the point is that Nintendo really did innovate on some of the most widely used standards of current-gen hardware... I know Sega came up with some good things, but how many of those are still used today? Everything I listed above is used on 2/3 or all 3 of the big three today.

The actual advancement fo the analog stick was not that it was na analog stick but that it was an analog stick controlled by the thumb and thumb alone giving it the convience of a digital pad..Which is more truth than most will recognize since the analog sticks are not really analog but infact digital analog in the case of the N64(an 8 bit or 256 stages of sensitivity). The old analogs controls were mostly variable rate resistors and or capacaitors. This is why the N64 analog controller is recognized as an innovation...Ita ctually existed on teh CD-I before hand but that to is a by product of the failed SNES CD product.

Memory expansion- Take a look at the bottom of all Nintendo consoles the NES/famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, N64, and GC. They all have expansion slots on the bottom as opposed to its competitors. The famicom had a modem even and online game. It also supported memory expansion through the game cartriidge which meant the game could have more RAM by adding it on the game cart its self. You also see this idea continued though the SNES with on chip upgrades. In terms of system expansion this was a more succesful route than an add-on. It is also not an innovation in my view as it doesn't rock the world.

Now if what you mean is memory cards as in saving to an external back up source. Both Sega and So.ny developed that technology along the same time. Nintendo had no need at thistime for a memory card though they did have one since carts still supported battery back up(developed by nintendo). However the first system to use a memory card was the Neo Geo back in 1990. So I am not really sure what you are getting at here and as above I find all of these things in this paragraph not neccesarily so much an innovation but a neccesatiyt to push forward. Passwords were annoying and PC games were saving game states well before consoles.

Touch Screen controls- It is true Palm/Pocket PC have been doing gaming on touchscreen for years before the DS. I have played those games Solitaire on my pocket PC. My Axim 50v gave me kick ass 3d gaming to before the DS. I think the real innovation is the use of a second screen which frees up the possibility of more uses for the touch screen as wel as the intergration of the microphone in the portable system.

Motion control-There were motion controllers before the Wii MS. the Playstation had a third party and then MS also had one. Force feedback was around i other forms before hand too. but nintendo si generally given this innovations for making them work in a software package. BTW you forgot the big innovation the 4-way D-pad.