We've got a team on the ground here at E3, and each of us has been concentrating on different things. Wait, before I go on, high praise for my colleagues Kris Graft, Chris Remo, Christian Nutt and Brandon Sheffield, who are not only awesome to work with, but have been doing great stuff here. Special thanks to our excellent overlord Simon Carless for looking after us all, and to TinyCartridge/GameSetWatch's Eric Caoili, who's been kind and diligent enough to help us with the news stories we miss while we're in briefings and meetings.
Since like most sites we attack E3 as a team, there've been plenty of things I haven't had a chance to see, and among those is Nintendo. Its booth is enormous and virtually dominates the show floor (where can I get a fluffy white carpet like that?) but I didn't go to its briefing and I haven't had the chance to see much of its stuff firsthand.
I've been concentrating on Microsoft and Sony, mostly, and their big reveals, among them the gesture-based control schemes they each unveiled. One thing I've heard in conversations here and on other internet forums is the idea that the two are "late to the party," so to speak, in the motion control department.
When Wii launched, people called its control scheme a gimmick -- but it turns out that "gimmick" enabled an entirely new audience of gamers, created an unprecedented userbase, and built revenue opportunities that've sustained the industry through an economic decline. In her interview with Christian Nutt, Nintendo's Denise Kaigler talks about starting the trend, and about how the company hasn't forgotten the core.
Now, of course the other two want in. Is it too late, though?
One common criticism against Nintendo is that no software developers can do significantly well on Wii except for Nintendo. This might be true if we're talking about the gamer audience -- what core franchise can do better on Wii than Mario, Metroid and Zelda? But visualize a universe where Nintendo owned only the platform, and a third-party owned those franchises. We wouldn't be having this conversation, necessarily (and so married are the spirit and design philosophy of those franchises to the feel and spirit of Nintendo's hardware tech that it's almost a moot point).
There are third-party successes on Wii. They're just not on your radar. Take-Two has top-seller Carnival Games, and Electronic Arts has had its best Wii launch to date with EA Sports Active just recently. All the casual and kids games you tune out during briefings are the kind of things that sell on Nintendo platforms, as well if not better than the things we can't wait to hear about and buy.
The general opinion seems to be that Microsoft's Natal is more useful to a wider audience than Sony's (I interviewed Sony about its motion control scheme and this idea of a core-versus-casual divide here). That may mean that Microsoft's concept is better positioned for success than Sony's.
Again, though -- there's already an all-audiences-oriented control scheme that works. It's rocketed Nintendo to the lead position in the platform wars. Is it too late for anyone else to compete? What do you think?
