E3 2009: Microsoft’s Conference (and Nintendo’s innovations)
I just finished watching the Microsoft press conference for E3 2009 and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with their offering. They had some really solid looking games coming soon. Social networking ties. Video upgrades. A whole new way to interact with your Xbox360. I’m happy Microsoft is bringing all this to my Xbox 360, but what I thought after I was all done is about how much I respect and will ALWAYS own a Nintendo console. Let me explain real quick..
I can quote the famous South Park episode in which everything ever done is responded to with a simple “Simpsons Did It!”. It just amazes me that every large innovation in video gaming was initiated by Nintendo. I think about the first gamepad most of us played with with the NES and think about where Sega went with it shortly after wards. They made it a little curvier and added an extra button. The basic idea was the same just slightly modified. Then came the N64 which brought a multitude of new innovations to gaming that were soon adopted. That analog stick you see on every major console in production since the N64. Then there was the Rumble Pack that was released for the N64. How many of us gamers have a hard time playing a game without that feedback that was introduced into every console as a standard feature after that? 3D games were also a very big step forward coming into the N64 and now you’ll be hard pressed to find games that aren’t. Now, this is a lot of Nintendo love for 1 paragraph. I’ll admit that I can’t think of much in the world of innovation when it comes to the GameCube, but I also can’t think of anything done by Microsoft or Sony that pretty pushed the envelope either. The latest innovation is getting us lazy gamers up off the couch to actually move around a little bit while we play games. Sony soon tried to follow suit with a really awful implementation in the SixAxis controller and now Microsoft is following suit by offering their own ‘get up off the couch’ solution. One that I’m certain they would not be showing off right now if the Wii wasn’t doing as well as it is. I’m not hating on anyone here. It’s the nature of the beast. You invent something amazing that everyone wants and you’ll find all your competitors trying to one up you. The main point I’m trying to make, is that Nintendo always seems to be ahead of the curve on a very consistent basis. For this reason, I don’t care what their next console is, I will own one. Back to Microsoft..
Why Wii Sports was a Brilliant Move
Nintendo’s brand new Wii came out yesterday so I figured it was only fitting to blog about it. For the first time since the Super Nintendo, you get a game packaged in with the new Wii. Wii Sports is a very very simple game. There isn’t a lot of depth to it. It’s just fun. Wii Sports is getting mixed reviews, but I can already tell why Nintendo packed it in with the system. Because it’s going to sell systems AND games. Let me explain…
Nintendo wants the non-gamer market. This means that all those people who have never played a game in their lives need to see a game that they can instantly pick up and play without a problem and have a blast with. Wii Sports is perfect for the non gamer because of it’s simplicity. There are no complicated controls. You don’t have to worry about making sure your fielder runs to catch the ball, all you have to do is pitch. You don’t have to worry about setting power and curves and angles and what not on little meters when you go to bowl, you just bowl. This is going to sell systems to the non gamers.
These non gamers obviously had to find out about Wii Sports somehow. You can ask any hardcore gamer if they dislike ‘recruiting’ gamers and none of them will say they do. So Wii Sports gets to be the game that the hard core early adopters show off to their non gamer friends to get them to buy a system. But there is another reason Wii Sports is a great pack in. Because all those hard core gamers will play it. These games are teasers for those of us who want depth in a sports game. When we play Wii Bowling and love how great it feels to bowl, it makes us wish there was a better looking bowling game. Maybe some better pin physics. So when Mario Bowling (or any more full featured bowling game, for that matter) comes out, we’re definately going to look twice at it. When we swing the Wii-mote like a bat, it just wets our appitite for MVP Baseball ‘07 or ’08. When we swing the racket, we can’t wait to have more control when playing a new full featured tennis game. The few punches you can throw (and the pretty good workout you can get) from boxing just makes us want to be able to have that many more options in our fight.
Every one of the Wii Sports is intentionally simple. The graphics are all pretty clean, but they’re far from gorgeous. The games are all pretty polished, but they leave so much more room for more. This is why I think that packing Wii Sports in with the Wii was the best move of this generation as far as selling systems. No one’s left out. Keep it going Nintendo!
