Nintendo surrenders and a win for PlayStation and Xbox – Part 2
For Part1, click http://www.senore.com/Nintendo-surrenders-and-a-win-for-PlayStation-and-Xbox-Part-1-a115002
On the other hand, things also do seem to have taken a bit of a comical twist.
In essence, Nintendo has gone from the innovative, inspired concept leader that it was when it first announced the best selling console of its time, the Nintendo Wii, to almost just another video game console manufacturer with the Nintendo Wii U.
One may argue that the Wii U is still more innovative and interactive than the current generation of consoles, but at the same time, no one knows for sure what Microsoft and Sony’s next generation consoles will be capable of.
At the same time, the other two giants of the video game industry, Sony and Microsoft, both seemed to drop the standard controller based gaming concept and adopt the motion controlled gaming phenomenon which Nintendo was the first to introduce on a large scale.
It is almost like Nintendo following the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 while the Sony and Microsoft copied the Nintendo Wii.
While ‘copy’ itself may be a harsh term to use, it is in essence what both Sony and Microsoft did with the PlayStation Move and the Kinect. To be more diplomatic though, we shall use the term ‘inspired’ instead of ‘copy’.
Both the Move and the Kinect were introduced after neither console could keep up with the sales of the Wii on their own. It seemed that the motion controlled gaming market was the new cash cow of the time and the two companies wanted in as well.
Sony took the Motion Controller concept and attempted to perfect it. They made it precise and launched a number of accessories to allow the gamer to use it for a number of games. A number of AAA titles, such as Killzone 3, SOCOM 4 and Resistance 3, had PlayStation Move control schemes and compatibility as well.
However, the Move never really got to the core gaming audience and was always just an add-on or extra.
Microsoft on the other hand decided to ditch the controller all together and opted to make gamers use their own bodies to control the games. The Kinect was extremely well received when it came out and it sold much better than the Move.
One reason could be that it was an innovation, an evolution from the restriction of the controller, while the Move was just an improvement of the Nintendo Wii.
The Kinect however, is also struggling from a lack of AAA titles, with compatibility with certain games having a tacked-on feeling to them, such as the Ghost Recon gunsmith feature.
The Wii ironically saw a dip in sales near the end of its cycle, which was mostly because of the fact that motion gaming seemed to be a bit of a prolonged fad. As fun as it was there was only one true way of playing video games and that was with the controller.
It seems Nintendo seemed to have realised that and opted to mesh the concept of motion control with the standard gaming controller with the Wii U, which makes us wonder if Nintendo are not a step behind the competition as one may think but rather a step ahead.
Sony and Microsoft have fallen for the motion controlled gaming trap, but it will be interesting to see how far their next generation of consoles will take it.
Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Bettor.com.
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