Okay, here we go
The Eye Toy applications on the PS2 may have sold poorly in the past, but as is with all software that requires accessories, the hardware was not bundled with the console itself.
Motion control on the Wii is successful and interesting to consumers only because it comes standard with the console, with software to use it from the very start. If it were like the Eye Toy, it would also be moderately successful at best.
Wii fit , Sing star , guitar hero , rock band and others disagree with you there. Eye toy was packedi n with many diffrent games even up to eye of judgment. None of those have have captured any signifigant amount of sales.
Think of the evolution of that to casual consumers. A bundled camera with decent resolution. Take features we now have in some games (like Tiger Woods and RB6 IIRC) a snapshot of your face, which translates into a modeled representation of yourself in the game. Interaction with onscreen objects has also been shown to have been possible with current technology (PS3) so I would assume that would only evolve as time goes by for the next entry into the Playstation family.
You say you don't want to 'shake your controller' when an enemy grabs your gun, and that it's as boring as a QTE. What other solution is there, exactly? Isn't shaking the analog sticks pretty much the exact same concept?
So next gen Sony will sell consoles based on niche features of this gen that no one has bothered to use ?
Lets also not forget what a b**** using the eye toy and the ms cam actually is. Eye of judgement takes me a good 5 minutes or so just to set up and get the light right in the room so the camera can read the cards. Let alone having to repeat motions to get the game going.
Also shaking a controller takes me out of actually playing a game. If i had to tap a button a few times its less disorienting than shaking my controller around like an idiot. I didn't care for it in cod or resistance.
YOU may not want hardware the is only moderately more powerful than current gen hardware, but I think millions of consumers have already shown that they are far more interested in engaging software with a low price tag than they are immersive games with a high price tag.
There are almost 50m users that have shown they want a massive leap in graphics. There are 28m users that bought a 360 and another 20m that bought a ps3.
Your telling me that Sony or MS would want to let go of 50m users and growing ? Even if you say well some people own both , thatj ust goes to show that there is a crowd of gamers willing to pay lots of money for games and there is an even larger crowd willing to pay for one of the two systems.
If next gen nintendo and ms go with a 2x or 4x console or whatever you think is a moderate power upgrade and Sony goes balls to the wall with an upgrade then they are potentialy looking at 50m users or more willing to buy that console and as the only game in town offering that experiance then they wont have to share those gamers with anyone.
That is the point of my arguement. When everyone else was focusing on power of their consoels nintendo failed with the gamecube cause they couldn't out do any of the others , they shifted to motion controls with the wii and was able to get that mekt to themsleve s but in the next generation if everyone is focused on wii type experiances than the company that looks into graphics again will have a way to get the focus all on themselves.
I'm of the opinion that massive leaps in hardware and power are not yet needed. The console industry needs to take a "break" from that, for at least one generation. Obviously as we saw at the start of this generation, consumers were not ready for it. The Economy is slow, and who knows if it will be 'booming' within the next few years.
I think it's in the best interest of the industry, and us as gamers, to settle for a moderate hardware increase in power, with bundled features to separate the strengths and weaknesses of each console, all at an affordable price.
Everyone stands to gain from this model, at least for one generation.
Like you said, those who don't like it will obviously gravitate to PC gaming, which would also be good for that industry as it would boost hardware sales, and potentially revive software sales.
There are more hd console owners than there are wii owners so that goes against what your saying.
I also don't see what gamers have to gain from your senario. I don't see game companys suddenly dropping the price of their games even if they can save money on development. Its not like costs are going to go down from this generation just becuase you made a modest leap in peformance , heck they will most likely go up even if all you do is double your ram your still looking at double the assets.
What you propose can actually be very bad for the industry. It could be the early 80s all over again with so many me too consoles that consumers get tired of it and stop buying .
The problem is, folks like us and folks on NeoGAF represent an extreme minority.
The majority (you know, the bread and butter for Sony/Nintendo/MS) are the guy's who would be absolutely fine with a marginal increase in power with a lower price point and retained visual quality.
Frankly, developers will find ways to use power. If we offer them a little more, they will find ways to exploit it. I just thing the market is passed the "tech hunger" as the 360 and PS3 have shown us.
The industry is changing, like it or not, and the folks you lable HD gamers, they really don't matter as much as you think. As I commented earlier, they will probably just gravitate to the PC market, which will be a good thing for the PC market in general, and good for gaming in general.
No one loses here if things happen like I think they will (should). Everyone wins.
Whats the majority ?if the wii has sold 46m and the 360/ps3 has sold 47m isn't the hd market the majority ?
If the wii had another console like it wouldn't there be a smaller amount of sales for the wii just like currently the 360/ps3 is spliting its market ?
once again . When everyone is doing the same thing , motion controls , cameras , how do you make your product stand out ? IP is one of them , but all 3 companys have those and i'm not convinced that one company has better ip than another. The other way is graphics and you can get that if someone builds a $400 console from the ground up while the other two go the enhanced route , that company will easily be able to show a diffrence and as the only game in town with high end graphics they can take hte hd market for themselves.
It prooves a lot.
Neither of the powerhouse consoles are selling as well as the PS2 did (what they should be compared to from the previous generation). I think that speaks for itself.
You forget that the ps2 was an extremely powerfull and extremely expensive console at the time. It launched a year after the dreamcast if i'm correct and was at least $100 more expensive (i'm not sure how much the dc was at that point) It was clearly an extremely large jump from the generation before it. It sold extremely well not only because of that but because Sega was bankrupt , nintendo had come off a poor selling extremely expensive media console (the games cost up to $120) that also had bad blood with 3rd party developers and MS with thier xbox who just entered the cosnole space , had an expensive console 18 months later than the ps2 and had no ip in the console space worth talking about.
all consoles since the last market crash have pushed the graphical experiance as far as it could go at the time of release and price point they were going for. The nes was a vast improvement over the atari and intellivison and what have you . The super nes / genesis improved on the nes , the saturn , ps1 , n64 improved on the older systems and so on and so forth.
It actually wasn't the focus on graphics that crashed the market in the early 80s. It was the lack of focus on the graphics. With the atari , intellivison and other systems of that time they all had close to the same graphics , many of them could play each others games , and they all had a slew of new user interfaces. None of that saved them from a market collapse because none of them offered anythign to stand above the rest of the stuff out there.
