Mod hat
There is no way we can know the financial details of the many deals going on behind the scenes.
This kinda of thinking / writing is very dangerous. I am not trying to single you out, but in two lines you have taken a hypothetical case for one scenario and then used that to question existing known information and honesty of one of the companies involved.
Whereas simply saying "I bet there is a lot of money being thrown about behind the scenes!" would have worked just as well
As I said earlier, it's OK to speculate on the motivations and future outcomes, but I don't like people writing factually about specific details that we don't know anything about.
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It's been interesting reading the replies here. Clearly people have very strong feelings
.ShadowRunner, I appreciate your honesty that you only care about yourself
The thing is, a lot of us post here because we are interested in the buisiness side of things - and ultimately it's the high risk, large plays that are the most interesting.
Going after small wins and incremental vicotories ultimately isn't good business practice. Sure, it's important, but it shouldn't be the driving factor behind product development and company direction. (Often the smaller pices are simply small parts in a larger strategic play).
This is why I find microsoft most interesting to watch. Of all three companies, they seem to have had the most consistent long term plan (with nintendo a close second).
At the end of this year, they will have a large number of factors aligning themselves. New console hardware, the biggest game release in history (potentially), a major new peripheral, and (I imagine) a number of new core software features will be rolled out too*.
Of course, when their plans don't work out - or are changed at the last minute - they stumble (and stumble most spectacularly). With the obvious knock on effects that entails. You can see this in aspects such as the removable hard drive (which, from what I recall, was rumored to be a cost cutting measure to compensate for doubling the system ram late in development - but that may be totally false).
*This is a total guess on my part, mainly due to the reasons they gave for recently cutting Live support on Xbox 1.
Whereas Sony appear to have / had a 'build it and they will come' attitude. The disconnected nature of their software is a particular sore spot for me.
And take it for what it's worth, but I'll also say I hear a lot of horror stories about Sony management changing their mind seemingly randomly - and most interestingly, a rumor that no Sony product ever dies - it is simply starved of funding and resources until it's important to management again.
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Which brings on to motion control, where I (like joker) feel Natal is primarily a play to introduce new customers to the Xbox (and it's existing content pool - including hard core games!).
I see the argument about buttons being a barrier to adoption, but I feel it's missing the details: It's not a problem with buttons, it's a problem that corresponding a button to an action is a barrier to entry.
If you looked at a TV remote and all you saw was 'left, right, X, A, Square, Circle, etc', then you'd be totally stumped. Game controllers are an abstraction on an interface - an interface and abstraction gamers are mostly familiar with (I'll be honest and say I still get confused by the circle/X/square/triangle thing almost every time there is an on screen prompt).
The wii was successful because it did a brilliant job of slowly introducing users to these interfaces and abstractions. Anyone could pick it up and see it had buttons - but that doesn't for a second mean anyone could pick it up and instinctively know 'A' equates to 'punch' and 'B' means 'hook', etc.
However, if that person was then shown that physically jabbing the controller in a punch motion performed a punch, well! that's the abstraction gone!
Wii sports and Wii play were brilliant because each game introduced a single level of abstraction. Wii Tennis used a button to lob, bowling used that button to release and also used the Dpad to move left/right. Etc etc.
But the interesting thing to pick out, is that this control scheme still required someone else with more experience to be there to introduce them. Even with the Wii there is a very low chance of an individual totally unfamiliar with games self discovering the system. Think of the in store kiosk example.
I know I've mentioned it before, but I had this experience hammered home to me when I watched my flatmate pickup a wiimote in an electronics store. He got totally confused and put it down. I had to show him that you used a punch motion to punch. There was no way he could have discovered it himself. He then used that single motion to explore the game. Given time he'd have probably discovered new motions, and then slowly discovered abstractions - but only once he was comfortable, and only in his own time.
This is where Natal really interests me, it potentially kills those abstractions and most importantly it is potentially a self discoverable interface - where you already know the natural limits and capabilities, because they what we are already most familiar with - your own body.
Given that, it's a matter of time until the used discovers speech, where they explore it's capabilities. They have fun.
Then they discover simple arcade games which (*shock, horror*) require a couple of buttons on the gamepad! That takes a few weeks of adjustment.
Until finally, 6 months later, they are buying 'hardcore' games like the rest of us. Although they only play them on Easy.
This - in my opinion - is why the Wii is so successful. Yet there is still a *simply massive* market out there. Gaming could easily be 10x the market it is today. It's all about getting over those first few hurdles. That is why Natal interests me.
Of course, it could be a total disaster as well.
