We’ve finally taken a look back at the many events of the recent months in the game industry. A recap:



MICROSOFT “Pre-Natal”

Project Natal got plenty of hype. It looked cool in the demo too — playing Burnout Paradise just by mimicking the motion of driving with your body. There’s always an excitement associated with new control paradigms – the presentations inevitably wow. But big companies often find themselves victim to “wouldn’t it be cool if…” thinking, without considering the real-life implications. Are you going to take on M. Bison in real-time in Street Fighter? How do you perform a summons in Final Fantasy? Many games require a greater level of control that can what be performed just by pantomiming actions with your body. Then there’s the issue of space in the living room to play games in that manner. Most people I know have their TV wedged onto their dresser just a few feet from the bed (nothing like Late Night studio).  Really I suppose in the end it will be up to the developers to build games that utilize Natal correctly.




One smaller, but exciting announcement was the addition of Facebook, Twitter, and Last.FM to the Xbox dashboard. This is another cool step towards the mythical “convergence” of all your entertainment and communication tools in a single box in the living room. And it adds a great social element to Xbox experience. Making new friends through online gaming alone can be hit or miss. But being able to link up with your existing Facebook friends using your Xbox might actually work.

NINTENDO Beyond “Gamers”

Now, no offense to anyone out there, but there’s a reason they have been selling so much since the Wii debuted in 2006. They sell games to people who don’t play games! And their latest announcement only furthers their direction towards the mass-market. Miyamoto-san announced that the new Mario title would have an interactive help feature included. This feature would complete a difficult section of the game for you — if you choose to activate it, allowing you to bypass especially difficult areas of the game.

To be honest – we were pretty shocked with this announcement. Games are compelling because of their interactive nature. What happens when you can have the game play itself? That’s taking things in a new direction that most traditional gamers are not going to be comfortable with. But then again, we probably shouldn’t be so self-righteous.  When I think of the millions of people who are buying Wii to get Wii Fit — they’re not going to attempt the campaign of Killzone 2. But if they knew there was an automatic way to get past difficult situations, they might give Mario a try.




SONY Wiimote meets Call of Duty?


Sony came out with an as-yet-unnamed motion sensing peripheral. It’s supposed to offer accurate motion capture and features a trigger button so it can be tied to in-game actions, such as swinging a sword, shooting a bow, etc. I think it looks cool, and might be fun to use. But will Call of Duty players put down their controller so they can stand in the middle of the living room, pointing their gun at the screen like House of the Dead?

Their big announcement was the new PSPGo, which will not include a UMD drive, and retail in the US for $249. Hmmm. There’s this other handheld everybody is getting now, called the iPhone. Somehow the iPhone is no longer competing with the PSP, but the other way around.

Also, I can’t escape the sinking feeling I get when I think about PS3’s long term prospects — and this is from someone who owns one. They really need to jump on the Xbox bandwagon and pursue online partnerships with sites like Netflix, Facebook, etc. To think you can’t use an internet ready device hooked to a television to watch television content is pretty nuts. The PS3’s answer to all this is social networking, — Home — which is entertaining to a point, but still feels like a walled garden.