So here we are, almost mid way through space year two thousand and eleven, and the world is, rather disturbingly, still completely devoid of robots, flying cars or teleportation devices. Something has gone horribly wrong. Where are our shiny space suits, our talking houses and our holidays to the moon?
Still, it’s not all bad… at least we’ve all got huge HDTVs, 3D movies are becoming commonplace (and 3DTV is very real) and we’ve got video game interfaces almost unrecognisable from the old waggle sticks of days gone by (can we refer to them as waggle sticks from now on actually?). However, being the cynical journo type that I am, I can’t help wondering if gaming as a whole actually wants, or needs, these swanky new high tech interfaces, or if we were getting by just fine with analog sticks, buttons and paddles…
It all started back in August of 2005 when the proposed controllers for the Nintendo Revolution (as the Wii was then known) were first shown to the public. Eschewing almost twenty years of experience, Nintendo were abandoning the regular controllers which had served both them and gaming in general so well for several decades and replacing them with something the likes of which we had only dreamt of in the past… a motion based control system. This was it! The future had arrived…
Almost immediately however, questions began to be asked about just how this system would work. Surely it would only turn out to be a gimmick, and Nintendo would soon find themselves returning to the old fashioned interface? What kind of games would this new control system foster, and how would they work? Surely you couldn’t spend all hours on end playing this console without doing yourself irreparable damage?
The public didn’t show much by way of concerns though, snapping up over five million units within the first three months of the system going on sale – a figure which now stands at over 75 million shipped worldwide, dwarfing the 38 million and 42 million units to date shipped for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 respectively – and ensuring hardware shortages around the world (although unsubstantiated rumours suggest that this was something carefully orchestrated by Nintendo in order to increase global demand for the system).
Unfortunately for Nintendo, it seems that software sales haven’t quite lived up to the levels of expectation one would perhaps expect from a system which has sold almost as many units as its two main competitors combined. In fact, the ratio of software sales per unit of hardware has been plummeting for the best part of eighteen months for Nintendo’s flagship system, suggesting that, although hardware sales are still impressive, people are either getting bored of their Wii’s pretty fast, simply not buying games for it or that there aren’t enough good games being release to drive software sales. From our personal experience, it seems to be a mix of all three. The Wii is a great system for a party when you’ve got non-gamers around, but there’s very little available for it to give it any kind of sustained usability.
Of course whether or not this is down to the control system is still to be seen. It’s most certainly the unique interface which has led to so many sales – the lack of traditional controller and intuitive “play like it’s real life” control schemes for many games has drawn a huge number of people who weren’t previously gamers into game stores across the world. And the likes of Wii Fit have done nothing to harm the reputation of the system amongst the incredibly lucrative female market, but what use is a console which only sells a handful of games to each unique owner across its entire lifespan, and what use is a groundbreaking control system if there aren’t enough good games to keep people putting their hands in their pockets to buy them? The answer is, of course, not much.
On the surface it looks like Nintendo have been cleaning up in this generation’s console battle, but the truth is that things perhaps aren’t as rosy as they appear. They have certainly cornered the casual gaming market by virtue of their gestural controls, but it’s the more hardcore elements of the gaming world who are standing in line for every new release and sustaining your console as an attractive option for developers… which is why it looks like Sony and Microsoft might be about to steal Nintendo’s hard earned thunder from right under their noses.
PlayStation’s Move probably has a slight edge on its competition – although it looks a little silly with its coloured ping pong ball on top, it represents something which is familiar to casual gamers… it’s got buttons. The motion controller coupled with a navigation attachment echoes that of the Wii, albeit one backed with a hell of a lot more raw processing power and the worldwide electronics brand name of Sony meaning that casual gamers who had so far put off getting the PlayStation 3 thanks to its expensive price tag may now see it as a more attractive option.
Kinect has the pure novelty factor behind it, as well as the fact that Microsoft has been pushing it hard as a lifestyle device as opposed to a true gaming one. The full body control offers us something we could only have imagined even a decade ago, and echoes the glimpse into the future we get while watching sci-fi like Minority Report or Star Trek.
The launch titles for the system represented a far more casual gamer friendly selection than those for the PlayStation Move, and the price tag for a brand new Xbox 360 with Kinect dwarfs that of a new PS3 plus Move, but does Kinect look to have the same fate awaiting it as the Wii?
While the PlayStation Move offers real potential for “hardcore” gamers, as displayed by Killzone 3’s clever integration of the system, Kinect simply doesn’t. For starters, it’s got no buttons, and secondly gamers tend to play games in their downtime, they don’t want to be working up a sweat just to play their favourite sports game – if they did they’d be down the park playing football instead of sitting on their arses in front of the TV.
Neither the PS3 nor the Xbox 360 are new consoles, so neither need to rely on these new peripherals to shift initial units – but both are relying on them to open their systems up to the brand new converts to video gaming created by Nintendo. Perhaps it is this new breed of casual gamer who will prove to be the most receptive to these new technologies, while we “established” gamers stand still and watch our attractiveness to developers and publishers slip away, forever consigned to the past… just like our analog sticks, buttons and bumpers.