The Changing Face of the Console Wars

An article at Gamasutra explores the decisions by Microsoft and Sony to launch significant hardware additions — their respective, upcoming motion-control schemes — in the middle of a console cycle, rather than waiting until the next generations of their systems are ready. It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones. Quoting: "... for Sony and Microsoft, motion controllers are their next-gen consoles. And it's a damn sight easier than launching Xbox 720 or PS4. They can debut these peripherals without needing to engineer completely new boxes for consumers, potentially bundle them over time, and they have a much better chance at getting exclusive games, thanks to the specificity of the hardware (something that's happened a lot for the Wii). Thus, both hardware manufacturers and publishers like EA see these controllers sparking new interest in Xbox 360 and PS3, which will delay the next dreaded console transition for another few years."

Comments

You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[binarylarry]

I know the solution! We'll copy Nintendo!

We'll be rich! Muahahaha

- Sony and MS boardrooms

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Zero_DgZ]

It's certainly been done before.

Remember that after the '84 video game crash, Nintendo came along and pretty much defined modern video gaming as we know it with the NES. Controllers with D-pads, managed third party licensing, holiday timed releases, literature, and mascots: Nintendo pretty much just made it all up and the rest of the fledgling industry followed suit.

Here's some food for thought: It's becoming pretty clear that gaming as a whole is moving towards a bit of a different demographic. This is partly because those of us who were the kids buying the first Nintendos and Segas have grown up into (presumably) responsible adultlike beings who are now buying Wiis and Xboxes. Coupled with this is the move to 'casual gaming' led mostly by the Wii (and also the DS) which is bringing in people from older generations who up until now have been unfamiliar with video gaming entirely.

One caveat about this: The "bug your parents" business model doesn't apply as well anymore. Older and wiser people who are making frankly massive investments into consoles and games for them are expecting to get a decent run time out of their investments. The huge new market of first-time gamers, grandmothers, and all the other people we like to pick on (who are all buying the Wii) are a tenuous market at best, and it's likely that the console makers are concluding that forcing everyone to jump ship and move to a new platform will probably alienate this whole market. Lots of grandmothers will say, "screw you, I'm not buying a new games machine" and suddenly not only are they not making money on new console sales but they're not making money on their legacy machine anymore, either.

The cash cow then becomes not selling new machines, but selling new upgrades for the existing machines. Grandma (or whoever) will swallow "buy this thing that plugs into your Wii (or Xbox, or PS3)" easier than she'll swallow "spend $500 on this new console that's different from your old one."

The Wii already has this curious casual gamer market. Sony and Microsoft sure want to capitalize on that success, and it's clear that the best (read: cheapest) way to do this is by upgrading rather than replacing. And while all the rest of us are cracking wise about people ripping off Nintendo, at least this method of Nintendo-rippage will be cheaper (and hopefully better) than replacing existing consoles outright. Which will piss off a lot fewer people.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Lord Bitman]

"Nintendo has completely dominated a market we didn't even no existed by adding basically nothing more than instructions telling people to move while playing video-games. If we make something which not only does that, but which also actually captures motion, perhaps we can claim the market they found for ourselves!"

Haven't tried WiiMotion+ because, for fuck's sake, should I need to spend £80 to try out something which the system claimed to already come with? I've got no evidence that it's actually any better, and I haven't heard if using WiiMotion+ improves the recognition on older titles, but my instinct is "of course it doesn't"

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[aliquis]

Good post but you lost me at grandma swallows.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Yvan256]

What do you mean? An african or european grandma?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[__aaqvdr516]

If by fad you mean the Wii is a longstanding dominant force in the market then I agree. But that's pretty much the opposite of the standard use of the word fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Toonol]

The problem with the Wii is that it's a fad. It's doomed to fail pretty quickly - the console sales are dropping, slowly but surely.

A fad that dominates this console generation. It's been out for two and a half years, and still sells far more per week than either of it's competitors. Sony's price cut and new slim model gave it a few weeks of increased sales, but it's already dropped back down. Even assuming the best case scenario for either MS or Sony, it will be at least 18-24 months before they could catch up with the Wii's market. Realistically, they're only fighting for second.

There's no reason to consider the Wii a fad; it doesn't fit the definition. That's like considering the iPod a fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[binarylarry]

It's also completely fucking pwned the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for the entirety of those ~3 years.

And the Xbox 360 had like a full year head start.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[joocemann]

A fad is something that becomes highly popular and is quickly replaced or suffers a loss of use.

I think it is pretty clear, given how little people actually play their Wii's (and how few games are actually even likeable), that it IS a current fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[brkello]

This is true, the Wii has won. But on a personal level, for me the Wii controller is a bit like the dumb standalone baseball games you can buy. It is fun for the mini-games, but really isn't as engaging for traditional games (like the ones I grew up with on the Nintendo). I like "normal" controllers. I like to lounge back on my sofa and play a console game. To me, the Wii has a weak lineup of traditional games other than their first party titles. I am very pleased with my 360 and the games it has. My friends all have Wii's which were fun at first, but all seem to be collecting dust now after the novelty has worn off. I really hope that Nintendo continues appealing to the casual gamers, but I don't want MS and Sony to go too far over that way. If everyone has to have motion controllers, it takes away the ability to play games the way I want to play it. I don't want to jump around like an idiot to play an RPG. I am glad these will just be addons and not replace the standard controller. Otherwise, I'd probably just stick with PC gaming.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[billcopc]

As someone who lusted after the elusive Wii for months before finding one, I can tell you first-hand it is a fad product. It was fun, we bring it to boring family parties and everyone tries the bowling, but it is dead to me.

It's fun to play, once in a while, but having every single goddamned game require you to either point at the screen or flail your arms, means I will never play it when I just want to "veg". There is no way to play Wii in a relaxed position, you can't just lay back in the sofa (or stretch out) and casually mash buttons. Call me lazy, but I'm not always in the mood to burn calories when I'm bored.

In contrast, I'm perfectly capable of playing Street Fighter, Resident Evil, many driving games, puzzle, RTS any many others with a cordless controller (or lap-style kb/trackball). Don't tell my guild, but sometimes I even play World of Warcraft while stretched out on the couch.

That fact alone makes the Wii far more tiring to play, thus discouraging extended play periods. I couldn't stand the new Zelda, and that right there should be a big hint. The only games I am willing to play are party-style, play for a minute then pass it to your buddy (and/or have another drink).

If Sony/MS add the gyro/motion controllers and a few party games to their existing library, it will make their platforms appealing to the casuals, without shutting it out from more traditional gamers like myself. Just don't make Halo 4 require a stupid gun controller I have to aim at the flood, or I will shove that controller AND the console up some designer's ass.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Atiniir]

This is pretty much the exact reason why I traded my Wii to some dude on craigslist for a 360. It's been over a year now, I have had no issues whatsoever with the 360, and within the first month of owning it, I put in more quality gaming time on it than I did in over a year of owning a Wii. The Wii is an underpowered, shit system with annoying mini games that mostly just focus on how "nifty" the Wii-mote is. I'm looking forward to the idea of add on motion control mostly because I like to believe that they'll use it to make RTS games way more fun to me than they ever have been. I imagine that gesturing at masses of troops and such that I want to control will be far more rewarding than using a cursor or what have you. Or it will just be a positive way to browse through my streaming netflix queue. I play games because I want to relax and have fun and flailing around wildly in my living room is pretty much the opposite of fun or relaxing to me.

New?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, consoles have been doing this for years.

The various attempts of light guns such as the super scope, sega mega 32x cd add on, eyetoy for the ps2, added memory pack for the N64 etc.

Re:New?

[QuantumLeaper]

Very true, they always launch some sort of add-on, and no really buys them and very few games will use it. When they do use the new controller, they still support the old one because that where all the sales will be. I can't even think of one new controller/add-on in mid-cycle that even sold had more than 50% of the players adopting.

Re:New?

[Ceiynt]

The original PS1 controller didn't have analog control sticks. Sony copied it from the N64, and has used the DualShock controller since.

Re:New?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

An universally, every single one of these attempts failed; miserably.

If a console does not have functionality on day one, or by default, then you cannot tack on additional requirements, especially when it comes to games. Developers already worried about how small your console demographic really is cannot risk further decimating their audience by requiring people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game. People are not going to be willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, when they could just buy two regular game, usually of higher wuality, for the same price. Light gun game makers have known this for years, and often package the game with the accessory to try and make the package more digestable.

The Wii broke through the gadget impasse by making the gadget an integral part of the console from day one. Sony and Microsoft have done this to a lesser degree by making wireless controllers and in Sony's case "motion sensors" available from launch. But they cannot catch up to Nintendo on the gadget front until the next cycle. It's not possible to get all owners to upgrade their consoles at once so that developers aren't looking at a decimated pool of players. Baring an exceptional few, developers will make games for the console they know everyone definitely has, and they are right to do so.

We are not witnessing a change in the old regime of video games, at least, not from Sony and Microsoft. What we are seeing is envy from these two companies. They want the player numbers and console sales that Nintendo has. What they don't realise, or want to admit, is such numbers will neccessary mean a precipitous drop in the overall quality of game titles and consistent marketing of gadgets, widgets and dongles which may catch casual buyers but which will not attract and hold the longer term game players that the console needs to truly survive. The Wii has become a tired, cliched dead end, or real interest to no-one who actually choose video games over other pastimes. It can and will be replaced by an even blander and cheaper new console or console-like platform at the first opportunity. Nintendo has lost its loyal fan base and is now reliant on an extremely fickle and detached user base with no attachment to the brand.

Gimicks are gimicks. They are not the future of video games. In modern games, I need to control movement of a character in 3D environment, while maintaining camera control and awareness, and while maintaining quick acess to broad array of functionality and abilities, all while making room for meta and system controls. How do I do this by waving my arms or shaking the controller? How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't. The standard controller is a proven method of such control and this has not happened by accident but rather by design, and it would be the height of folly to disregard that.

Sony and Microsoft complain that modern games are "too hard" for potential new players to understand or control, so we need new control methods. This is like arguments that maths is too difficult, so we shouldn't bother having people learn it. Yes, it's hard to learn how to control video games. But for decades now people have done just that, despite the difficulty. Why? Because they truly love to play video games and have put in the effort to become good at doing so. Just like people who actually like so called "difficult" things like maths will put in the effort to become better. People who cannot control video games are people who were never interested enough to bother learning how, yet now you want to disregard the former group for this latter, albeit larger one?

For the long term sake of your business, which of these groups should you be trying to hold onto? By focusing on these peripherals instead of on core games, what kind of foundation are building for your business over the next ten years?

Re:New?

[A12m0v]

Gimicks are gimicks. They are not the future of video games. In modern games, I need to control movement of a character in 3D environment, while maintaining camera control and awareness, and while maintaining quick acess to broad array of functionality and abilities, all while making room for meta and system controls. How do I do this by waving my arms or shaking the controller? How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't. The standard controller is a proven method of such control and this has not happened by accident but rather by design, and it would be the height of folly to disregard that

I guess someone here didn't play Super Mario Galaxy

What? No.

[stonecypher]

The extension of consoles is the defacto behavior for consoles, and always has been. In modern times it's been things like Wii Fit, the Eye Toy and so on, but nobody here has forgotten the Power Glove or the Power Mat, the Sega CD and the Sega 32x, and indeed that pattern goes back into the 70s, with the Intellivision overlay system and the Commodore 64 Extender.

Indeed, it's only the last generation or two which have skipped it. Anyone who believes this is new has only been gaming through one generation of consoles, and that should be their first red flag that they're not ready to talk about the history of gaming.

Could not be less correct.

How is this new?

[Darkness404]

How is this a new tactic? Nintendo released a successful Famicom Disk System for the Famicom (NES in Japan) that expanded the Famicom by using cheaper media and cheaper games that could easily save without extra expense of a battery backup. Sega released like a million things to expand the Genesis (Mega Drive) including a CD add on, and the 32x. Nintendo used games with new CPUs and other chips to extend the life of the SNES beyond the 16 bit generation.

Naturally

[Dan East]

We are reaching an era in computing where devices can push audio and video beyond human perception levels. For example, if display resolution were increased, a person would not be able to tell the difference visually from typical viewing distance. Or if color depth were increased to 64 bit over 32 bit could that even be perceived? I'm not saying we're there yet, but we are quickly approaching that point.

Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.

Long lived generation

[spire3661]

THe reason the last generation of consoles went by so quickly is because the level of online interactivity on the previous consoles left alot to be desired and were jsut out of reach. Now that all the consoles have successful online digital money presses, the motivation for new hardware is less and less. I figure we wont see next gen prototypes for at LEAST 2 more years, maybe more.

Re:Long lived generation

[4D6963]

No that's a biased way of looking at it because the Dreamcast didn't have any successor (and it came out in 1999, not 1998). Look at it this way, PS2 (2000) to PS3 (2006), 6 years, GameCube (2001) to Wii (2006), 5 years, Xbox (2001) to Xbox 360 (2005), 4 years. So the average periodicity for this previous generation was 5 years. It's not THAT short but on the other hand I don't think it's ever been shorter.

Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[erroneus]

Perhaps it's merely my own lack of vision and creativity, but I can't imagine much further growth in the capabilities of consoles. Display technologies have been maxed out. Memory and processing systems are well balanced between power and cost even if the consoles are still a bit too costly in my opinion. Until the next great other technology comes out, I can't imagine getting much better than it already is... a little better perhaps, as the costs of more impressive technologies decrease, but nothing significant. In fact, I would go so far as to say the advancement between XBox and XBox360 is barely noticeable. PS2 and PS3 is largely the same thing.

What they will do, in the next gen, however, is figure out new ways to kill the second hand and other post-first-sale business activities. If the PSP Go is any indication of what is to come, we are going to see a decrease in the popularity of new consoles.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

The current generation of consoles are TERRIBLE compared to PCs. A new PC with a Radeon 5870 has nearly 6-8 times the graphical processing power.

Most consoles games run at sup 720P resolutions and are upscaled to fit a 1080p screen, view distance in console games is terrible, textures are blurry messes, and frame rates suck.

The fact that you can't see a difference between the xbox to xbox360 is laughable.

Just because you have low standards doesn't mean the tech can not advance much further than it already is.

Either way, eventually the hardware will get powerful enough to run real time ray tracing in HD, or at least a mix or real time ray tracing and rasterization, this is when consoles will most likely achieve very long life cycles.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[PostPhil]

No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.

Here's what I think is important:

1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...

2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.

3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

Yawn, alright that's an old debate but since you've been modded up...

1. Big deal, crack the games (even if you bought them) and see if that's such a big deal. Now trying pirating games on consoles (if you're opposed to pirating then it's a moot point for you though).

2. You already have a PC, so that's a dishonest point to make. Everybody has a PC, no matter whether or not they want to play video games. And even if you have a 3 year old PC with an integrated Intel graphics chip it won't take you more than $300 to have a machine that overpowers the Xbox 360. And PC games are priced cheaper than console games. Also, I can play PS2 and Wii games with my PC. Can your Xbox do that?

3. Bullshit. Consoles are basically cheap PCs (what's the Xbox 360 but a glorified PC with a special OS?) and even share the same hardware. And for all you care, your average PC will kick the arse of any console currently out there. You might say that theoretically things would work better on consoles since the hardware configurations are unified but these days that's a bullshit point to make. And if you disagree well you can keep your Red Ring of Death Xbox and I'll keep playing games flawlessly on my PC.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

That's a good point. I never thought of it because I don't have any friends :D.

All about the money...

[biscuitlover]

Could this be because of the losses that Sony and MS are making on each unit sold? I couldn't say whether past consoles always turned a profit, but I suspect that after investing so much money in their respective hardware, neither company wants to move on to the next gen before they can claw back as much cash as possible on games and add-ons...

Re:Thank You Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

There, fixed that for ya.

What does this mean for game design?

[damn_registrars]

Currently, button-mashing is pretty similar between the Sony and MS consoles. This makes it pretty easy to conceptually port a game from one of the two consoles to the other (which is probably part of why we so so many simultaneous releases for the two), even if the programming APIs are distinct. On the other hand, the Wii controller has very few buttons and is controlled more so by gestures and movements.

If Sony and MS start pushing for motion-driven controllers, instead of button-mashing, and they each design their own new controllers for that, what is the likelihood that the inputs will actually be similar? If a useful motion - say a forward stabbing motion - is interpreted dramatically different between the Sony and MS systems, this could potentially make cross-platform release more time and resource intensive for the game companies.

Which, one could conjecture, could potentially drive the game companies to release more games on just one platform, instead of both Sony and MS.

Re:What does this mean for game design?

[grumbel]

For this generation the most likely thing is that most games will completely ignore the motion sensing stuff, as it doesn't make much sense to invest large amount of money into an add-on that only a fraction of people will own.

On top of that its questionable if motion sensing would even work for regular hardcore games. Especially Microsofts Natal just seems unfit, with no buttons at all you are extremely limited in how you could use the controller in a game (how do you fire a gun?).

Sonys solution looks more promising as it actually has buttons, so it might be useful as a lightgun like tool that could enhance aiming in some games. But how to apply it to gaming in general is still pretty much an unsolved problem and it remains to be seen how many buttons it really has (Is it a full PS3 controller replacement?).

Even on the Wii after all those years people are still struggling to do anything useful with the motion controller in regular games. And more often then not the results are rather uneven.

I think in the end we will end up with a bunch of party & mini-games, some experimental use in regular games and then only see actual real use of motion sensing in the next generation after all that experimentation is over and some new gameplay mechanics have been established.

Accessories and gimmicks

[wampus]

You can sell more $99 gizmos and gimmick games than you can new consoles, pure and simple.

What? Game consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG I'm a computer nerd. I thought this article was about terminal emulators!

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[icebraining]

You now, he was responding to the GGP post, who said

"Display technologies have been maxed out. "

And clearly they haven't. That doesn't mean the PC is a better gaming machine, it's just technologically more advanced. The reason for the lack of single-system multiplayer games is not technical, it has to do with different target markets.

Re:What? No.

[Jerf]

The Intellivoice sounds like a closer fit to what we're talking about, as it enabled a new form of game, rather than functioning as backwards compatibility.

No idea if that's what the original poster meant. But it definitely does show that augmenting consoles is a very old idea... older than many people reading about it. :)

Somewhere around here I still have an Intellivoice, and all four released games for it (I don't count the baseball one). You have not lived until you've heard a little 4KB cartridge (not a typo! in fact, 4KB was twice the usual size; and yes, I'm using bytes because I think measuring games in kilobits is a crock) babbling away at you. An amazing amount of voice was shoehorned into those things. Online MP3s that have samples of even a single thing it could say are themselves larger than all released games combined.

$2 billion says you're very wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero has proved, to the tune of $2 billion in sales, that you *CAN* "requir[e] people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game".

Clearly people *ARE* willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, instead of just buying two regular games, for the same price *IF* you create a game that makes it sufficiently more enjoyable to play with the accessory. The announcement of Guitar Hero for the PSP demonstrates that the game does not require the accessory controller, but who honestly believes it would have been as successful on the major consoles if it had used just the standard controllers?

I'd rather just have next gen

[Quiet_Desperation]

For me the way to ease the purchase of a new gen console is with strong backward compatibility. When I bought an XBox 360, it was partially because I never had the original XBox, and the XBox games (Halo 1/2, Fable 1, Jade Empire, etc.) I wanted to play were on the compatibility list. I really feel Sony dropped the ball when they dropped PS2 compatibility.

I've gone back and rented a number of Gamecube games (Tales Of Symphonia, Eternal Darkness, etc.) for my Wii. If Nintendo wanted to have achieved true awesomeness in my eyes, they would have put a slot for Gameboy Advance games in the thing. I played some GBA games on the attachment for the Gamecube, and playing them on a big TV is great. Advance Wars with big, glorious maps made the game much more epic.

I also recall the Sega 32X and the CD for the N64. both of which I have. Nifty idea, but the developers just don't develop in droves for something not in the core system specs.

Re:Sucks for PC users

[Quiet_Desperation]

Game graphics advances will be stunted

And some of us gamers cry "Thank effing baby Jebus" for that. Have you missed all the complaints about how gaming is too dominated by graphic card wank fests over who has the best lighting effects or water reflections? Or how the hardware has advanced too much along the polygon count side, actually making it difficult to do anything else other than service shiny graphics, enemy AI or any other intellectual concerns be damned?

I guess the bright side is I won't be blowing $300 every 2 years on graphics cards.

Yeah, bingo. People are getting tired of that. A friend showed me a newer PC FPS a couple weeks ago. Pretty as all hell, but just another goddamned shooter with dumbass enemies and puzzles for the short bus crowd. Whee!

Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[beatsme]

Thank the heavens. The gimmick will no longer be about graphics, but gameplay. Now, how long before the emphasis is on storytelling?

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[alen]

mod this up

last 20 or so years the only thing that improved in consoles was graphics. the controllers have stayed the same and a few gimmicks like the power glove never caught on. now the graphics are good enough even if they get better that people want a different game play experience and not just better graphics

The sooner the better

[nlawalker]

The sooner that everyone has implemented and is using motion controls, the better. We need developers to get shitty, gimmicky uses of it out of their systems, and we need better hardware and software for reduced lag and more precise control.

Am I really personally that interested in games that are 100% built around motion control? As the Wii taught me, no, I'm not. I think a lot of game enthusiasts feel the same way. What I *am* excited about, and what I think game enthusiasts should be excited about, is when developers come up with more subtle uses that really add control and flexibility. One thing I really want is the ability to change the direction of the first-person camera in racing games by tilting my head, so I don't need to take my hands off of the controls (note - I'm not talking about "head tracking" where position data is used to provide a realistic viewport, I'm just talking about mapping head tilt to an analog camera control). My understanding is that GT5 + PS Eye will provide this feature. Leaning in first person shooters is another good example. Is it a "realistic" 1 to 1 mapping of a real world motion to a game action? No, but it adds to a player's ability to control the game seamlessly. It only adds to the experience - it doesn't take anything away and you don't have to use it, and the game is still perfectly playable even if you don't have the right hardware.

We need to get to the point where developers are no longer asking "how can we establish a good player experience by using motion control" and instead focus on gameplay and implementation with standard controllers, later asking "where could motion control help this experience we've established?"

Re:Your claims are pointless BS

[TheKidWho]

Wow Reading comprehension, get some you retard.

Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[SuperKendall]

1. Big deal, crack the games

You ignored the whole breakage due to OS updates.

2. You already have a PC, so that's a dishonest point to make. Everybody has a PC, no matter whether or not they want to play video games.

Almost 10% of new computers buyers have macs actually.

Of the ones that have PC's, large numbers of them today just have laptops. Just how are they going to put in that new video card? What about netbook buyers? Are they going to have a fantastic gaming experience too even though they technically have a "PC".

Consoles are great because it frees you from the ball and chain of HAVING to buy powerful systems and Windows.

3. Bullshit. Consoles are basically cheap PCs

Bullshit back at you. If the consoles were "basically PC's" the PS3 would not be harder to code for. Microsoft has made the 360 more like a PC to be sure, especially library wise - but it's all still very proprietary and custom stuff housed inside, only from the library side does the console look that much like a PC.

Your tired old canards about PC gaming belong to somewhere around five years ago, consoles are quite obviously the present and future of gaming. It's best you get used to this now so you can save yourself a ton of money and aggravation. I am so glad I got off the gaming PC upgrade train a few years ago...

I'd be interested in their 360 addons...

[AmazingRuss]

... but my FOURTH xbox is starting to flake out, and will probably be dead soon.

I appreciate that they sent me 3 new ones under warranty, but god DAMMIT, a console should last more than a year. I would have thought that by the 3rd one they would have figured out how to manufacture them correctly.

Re:What is changing?

[AA Wulf]

Exactly, I don't understand what this line is all about:

It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones.

Let's go through a long list of things released during the 20+ year console war's history, shall we?

Nintendo Power Glove
Nintendo Power Pad
Nintendo Light Gun
Nintendo R.O.B.
That little light and magnifier thingy for the Nintendo GB?
Sega 32X
Sega CD
Atari Jaguar CD
Nintendo Super Scope
Nintendo GBA's integration into the Nintendo Gamecube
Xbox Media Center
Sony Playstation DualShock controller
PS one (compete w/ LCD screen)
Sony Playstation 2 Slim
Sony Playstation 3 Slim
The numerous add-on peripherals for Nintendo Wii

How is any of this different than what we have had for the last 20 years? It has always been the trend of console designers to milk us for every cent they possibly can on a gaming console before coming out with the next generation. Few systems (like the Xbox) have done so generally with new functionality without the need to purchase add-ons. Others have released better, sleeker versions of the original console before moving on the the next gen. Still others have given us a schlew of peripherals in an attempt to generate revenue from those looking to create "home arcade" systems.