Sony are running third and last in this generation of home consoles, having made more mistakes than a Bush presidency. However here at E3 2009 they started showing signs of getting their act together. But is it too little too late?
There are 364 games coming to Playstation platforms over the next year, presumably they are missing out new years day. And there is a lot for the PS3 in there: Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker, Gran Turismo 5, Rock Band: Beatles, God of War, Agent, Final Fantasy XIV Online and Modern Warfare 2. Just for starters. Impressive stuff.
The Playstation 3 answer to the Wiimote and Natal was announced but is nearly a year away. It is an extension of Playstation Eye and consists of a stick with buttons on it and a glowing orb on the end. Quite frankly this already looks like old technology compared with Natal’s whole body interface, voice input and face recognition (presuming it all works as advertised).
But the PS3s biggest problem is that it is always trying to play catch up with the Xbox 360 and failing. Most critically because Sony persist in selling the PS3 at an expensive price point that is difficult to justify from the consumer perspective. And after what Microsoft presented at E3 this year one can only see the PS3 dropping behind further.
In the light of the tour de force that Microsoft presented at this year’s E3, it is very difficult for the other platform holders to compete. And Nintendo didn’t.
Nintendo are in a poor position. Their home console for this generation, the Wii, is the least capable, being just an upgrade of the previous generation GameCube. It has been incredibly successful because of it’s innovative gesture controller and a small number of high quality platform exclusive games. But it lacks the equivalent of an Xbox Live or even a Playstation Network. And its main party trick, the gesture controller, has now been trumped by the Microsoft Natal. The Wii also does not support HDTV and does not come with a hard drive.
Sales wise the Wii has peaked in most markets and in Japan it is very weak. It now looks very expensive compared to the Xbox 360, a competitor which has a lot more to offer.
So Nintendo announced Wii Fit Plus, a new 2D version of Super Mario Bros, presumably aimed at children, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Wii Vitality Sensor, a device to read your pulse. Hardly setting the world alight and showing all the signs of a platform nearing the end of its life.
One has to wonder firstly how long the Wii can sustain its premium price and secondly how close we are to seeing its successor, the SuperWii.
On the handheld front the DSi is getting good initial sales, presumably from existing DS owners upgrading. However it is now looking positively archaic compared to the more modern phone based devices like iPhone and Android. Nintendo need to act quickly not to be left behind in this market.
The BBC have a really good interview here which is well worth watching. And I must admit that the more I read and think about this, the more impressed I am.
The Wiimote will now be seen as interim technology, a side story on the road to the whole body interface. Having face (and emotion) recognition in Natal is a big step forward with huge gaming potential. Allied to the whole body scanning and voice recognition we have something that is of groundbreaking importance.
Natal has immense possibilities way beyond recreational gaming. Sports coaching, medical rehabilitation and military training spring immediately to mind. In fact any human activity where you have to build neuromuscular facilitation.
The limitations put on the human imagination by previous gaming interfaces have all been swept away. A lot of clever and creative people are going to do a lot of clever and creative things with Natal.
The Microsoft E3 press conference was so full of big announcements and celebrities that they couldn’t fit everything in. So it was left to a press luncheon for one of the most important announcements.
Games on Demand will allow games to be bought, using credit cards, from the Xbox Live service for direct download onto the hard drive. Starting in August with 30 games with more added on a regular basis. They are talking about titles like Crackdown, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 2, Assassin’s Creed, Oblivion and BioShock. There is no reason why they shouldn’t make the entire catalogue of Xbox games available for purchase this way.
Of course Microsoft are, for once, behind Sony in going down this route.
The whole concept of high street retail and physical stock for digital distribution is looking decidedly archaic now, we are only holding onto it by habit. Getting rid of bricks and mortar is brilliant for publishers who can launch a game simultaneously worldwide without having to carry any inventory and without having to give massive margin away to the distribution chain.
I have been going on for ages about the convergence between gaming and social networking. Now Microsoft have made this a greater reality by integrating both Twitter and Facebook with Xbox Live. This is a massive announcement that will significantly change how people play and how they network socially. It enhances Live hugely to distance it even further ahead of anything else out there.
In 2002 Sony brought us the Eyetoy peripheral but failed to capitalise on its potential. At the 2005 Tokyo Game Show Nintendo revealed their Wii gesture interface that was probably the biggest ever single step change in video gaming. Now Microsoft, after a long gestation, have taken both these ideas and developed them several steps further for the Xbox 360, adding voice control whilst they were at it.
If this works as well as portrayed in the video above then it will be little short of revolutionary, the imagination of game designers can take flight in limitless ways. Removing all control input limitations means gaming can go places we would never have dreamed of.
From a hardware point of view the change in abilities that this brings the Xbox 360 are so great that it is almost like they had launched a new console. But the upcoming Xbox 720 will still be on schedule, Moore’s Law and competitive pressure will make this inevitable.
And competitively, if Natal works as advertised, the Wii will be in severe trouble with its main party trick trumped. And the Playstation 3 is looking distinctly old generation with no gesture interface. All this could change over the next 48 hours as Nintendo and Sony make their E3 announcements. We live in interesting times.
Using Sky on Xbox will be better than the existing Sky service because you will be able to use all the Live community features at the same time. So you can watch a live football match whilst chatting about it to your friends all over the country.
