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Motion Control To Lengthen Console Hardware Cycles
With the recent E3 demonstrations of new motion-based control for consoles — Microsoft's Natal, Sony's Motion Controller, and Ubisoft's camera-based system for the Wii — analysts now expect the current console generation to last longer than normal. Microsoft exec Shane Kim said he expects the Xbox 360 to last until around 2015, in part due to Natal and new services available through Xbox Live. Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald thinks this cycle may not need to end at all:
"Microsoft and Sony have invested so much in their current hardware line, as have third party publishers, that we don't think any party is seriously interested in throwing away these investments and starting over from scratch. For all of these reasons, we think this cycle will last longer than those in the past, and don't see new hardware coming until 2011 at the earliest, and 2012 to 2013 more likely (if at all — if new services like OnLive take off, or if Xbox Live and PlayStation Network become more and more robust, there may not be a need for another console cycle).'"
Have we really reached the point where "Good enough is"
Is the XBox 360/PS3 really the pinnacle of console gaming for the next 5 years?
With the Wii selling bucketloads more initially than anything else, despite having inferior graphics hardware, have the other two finally realised that Faster chips, bigger numbers and impressive specs are really just nothing more than macho posturing?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
The major failing of current motion control systems (wiimote, Natal, whatever the PS3 system is called) is that there's no feedback. You're waving about, and simply hope that the game gets it right. By removing the layer of abstraction the controller provides, you're making things LESS immersive by starkly revealing that the game cannot respond to you in ways other than the visual or the audio.
Until cheap, reliable haptic control systems emerge (not a for about half a decade if things like the Falcon, and the cost of more flexiable systems, is anything to go by), motion control will be limited in usefulness to a few casual games that don't require fast and accurate responses.
I'm not convinced that the "waning interest of consumers" actually exists outside of a niche. Console manufacturers make the most money during the tail-end of the cycle, when the console is affordable by the massmarket and is being produced at a profit or at least a significantly smaller loss. The manufacturers actually don't make a whole lot of money during the period in which it's being sold to "gamers [...] constantly looking for the latest and greatest". Those customers are a necessary part of getting the word out, but the people that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are really keen to please are the people who grab the system and a half-dozen three-year-old games for $300 at Walmart.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yes they did.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
That's a myth.
From Wikipedia:
Best selling PS3 games:
Xbox 360 games selling more than 3.31 million:
Wii games selling more than 3.31 million:
So the Wii has 5 games that have sold more than any game on either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
Looking at it another way, the top 10 PS3 games have sold a total of 21.4 million copies, the top 10 Xbox 360 games have sold a total of 29 million copies and the 10 Wii games have sold a total of 133 million copies. The consoles themselves have sold 21.3, 28, and 50 million copies each respectively. So for the Wii, excluding Wii Sports, that's 87 million top 10 games for 50 million consoles: 1.7 games per console. The other two consoles manage only 1 top 10 game per console.
In terms of total games, PS3 has sold 94 million and the Wii has sold 353 million. Not sure about the Xbox 360. So that's 4.4 games per PS3 and 7 games per Wii (6 excluding Wii Sports).
Clearly, the idea that the Wii has a lower "attach" rate is pure BS. It might have been true initially but now the attach rate is significantly higher for the Wii.