I should be at my friends house right now, so I've set a short amount of time aside to work on this post a day before. Hope it turns out all right... so lets pre-heat the oven and get cooking!
It's just one big game of leapfrog, really.
Back in 2005 Microsoft came into the gamers' eyes by producing the Xbox 360, with Sony following with their successor to the widely-popular PS2, the PS3. Both consoles packed a punch in terms of quality (at the time), and offered to gamers their performance and feature-packed systems to their already aquired fanbases.
Nintendo, with a crowd of its own, released their new console, the Wii, just after the PS3 launched.
It didn't size up in terms of size or speed, but Nintendo chose a different route to its rivals - towards the casual gaming market.
The hype was all about the motion-sensing controllers, the simplicity, the intuitiveness of gameplay... the aim was to provide adults, families, elderly, and people that had never used a console before to experience the potential thrill of gaming.
That was in 2006.
It's coming up to 40 months since the Wii first launched, and its new direction has certainly been a good choice. Three (and a bit) years ago the pro gamers were looking down at the small, white console and contemplating how much use they would get out of it, and that the new controls were too fiddly and would be difficult to master. They were wrong.
With an estimated 68 million consoles sold, its certainly become one of the world's most popular (and widely recognised) consoles of the seventh generation.
The point I wanted to make about this is now it seems like Sony and Microsoft have realised how popular casual and intuitive gaming can be, and are desparate to assure true PlayStation and Xbox enthusiasts that they wont be left out. Quite funny, actually. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are leapfrogging each other in one direction, when Nintendo changes direction because it thinks it's found a shortcut, but Sony and Microsoft don't start following until Nintendo is too far ahead. That's right, following. Oh, you haven't heard the news?
Revealed at E3 in Los Angeles back in 2009, Microsoft's bid at controller-free gaming begins with Project Natal. Simply put, it's a camera you can connect to your Xbox 360 that can sense depth, and can track full-body motion to control a character on screen in free space. A very ambitious jump by Microsoft, as gamers are already contemplating the usefulnees of not having a controller. I wonder how they'd play online shooters, though? It'd be hard to run on the spot without looking like an idiot.
And as for Sony, they haven't gone into the controller-free environment yet, but rather taken Nintendo's Wii Remote and stuck a coloured orb at the top and called it... the PlayStation Motion Controller?! That's a motuhful. And instead of being tracked via infrared a la Wii, it's done by... camera. That's right, the PlayStation Eye is becoming useful in more ways than one by tracking the wand's position. This 'new' technology was allegedy also revealed at E3, although I'll admit I only heard about a few weeks ago.
So how will it end up? Has Nintendo already surged too far ahead? Or will Microsoft activate the turbo boost and surpass the Wii? I guess only time will tell. It is just a big, expensive game of leapfrog after all...
The Final Section
Today we skip the StumbleUpon section to present the bids at surpassing Nintendo. And they are:
What I'm Watching: Microsoft's bid: Project Natal.
Sony's bid: The PlayStation Motion Controller.
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