Motion Control To Lengthen Console Hardware Cycles 160
With the recent E3 demonstrations of new motion-based control for consoles — Microsoft's Natal, Sony's Motion Controller, and Ubisoft's camera-based system for the Wii — analysts now expect the current console generation to last longer than normal. Microsoft exec Shane Kim said he expects the Xbox 360 to last until around 2015, in part due to Natal and new services available through Xbox Live. Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald thinks this cycle may not need to end at all:
"Microsoft and Sony have invested so much in their current hardware line, as have third party publishers, that we don't think any party is seriously interested in throwing away these investments and starting over from scratch. For all of these reasons, we think this cycle will last longer than those in the past, and don't see new hardware coming until 2011 at the earliest, and 2012 to 2013 more likely (if at all — if new services like OnLive take off, or if Xbox Live and PlayStation Network become more and more robust, there may not be a need for another console cycle).'"
Re:Good enough is? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh sure. But I'm not advocating photo-realistic Wii Tennis here! Just a few more pixels would be nice, some more anti-aliasing, that sort of stuff. At the moment quite a few of the games look blocky on a 1080p capable screen, even when using the component/576 mode.
Re:Good enough is? (Score:3, Informative)
> The GFX on the Wii look pretty poor on a decent sized 1080p capable panel.
They look like a smeared mess, IMHO.
What bothers me isn't that it can't do HD, but that it doesn't even do an on-board upscale. If it did the upscale as graphics were written into the image buffer, it could get a MUCH better upscaling than any TV could do to the content, by understanding it better.
Re:Blu-Ray... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they did.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
That's a myth.
From Wikipedia:
Best selling PS3 games:
Xbox 360 games selling more than 3.31 million:
Wii games selling more than 3.31 million:
So the Wii has 5 games that have sold more than any game on either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
Looking at it another way, the top 10 PS3 games have sold a total of 21.4 million copies, the top 10 Xbox 360 games have sold a total of 29 million copies and the 10 Wii games have sold a total of 133 million copies. The consoles themselves have sold 21.3, 28, and 50 million copies each respectively. So for the Wii, excluding Wii Sports, that's 87 million top 10 games for 50 million consoles: 1.7 games per console. The other two consoles manage only 1 top 10 game per console.
In terms of total games, PS3 has sold 94 million and the Wii has sold 353 million. Not sure about the Xbox 360. So that's 4.4 games per PS3 and 7 games per Wii (6 excluding Wii Sports).
Clearly, the idea that the Wii has a lower "attach" rate is pure BS. It might have been true initially but now the attach rate is significantly higher for the Wii.
Re:Blu-Ray... (Score:2, Informative)
I have not played a single DS game where the touch screen is a gimmick, it is almost always unused (e.g. Mario Cart DS), and alternate control method that may or may not be better (e.g. advanced wars), or a fantastic edition (e.g. tap for backup item in NSMB). The Wiimote is a different story though often it is used as a very fun gimmick.
As for attach rates:
http://vgchartz.com/aweekly.php [vgchartz.com]
This is the American charts, it has the attach-rate at about the same as the PS3 and lower than the 360, of course arguments can be made to drop the Nintendo one by 1 or 2, it is still pretty fricken high in raw numbers of sales. If you subtract out 1 from the attach-rate (for Wii Sports) you end up with 150 million to XBOX 360's 170 Million, and PS3s 70 million. This is in the most 360 heavy region (North America).
Where Nintendo really makes their money though is software. Taking out Wii-play and Wii-sports they still sell more than EA on many weeks, and without licensing fees. Nintendo dominates in total money in the industry by such a huge amount that it isn't even funny. As far as the games industry goes Nintendo is a shrewd company, that is miles ahead of the rest.
Even with the Came Cube they were a major publisher by raw numbers, this is competing against companies selling for XBOX, PS2, and Computers.
Re:Blu-Ray... (Score:3, Informative)
Fixed that for you.
MotionPlus doesn't give you 1:1 mapping. The controller has still no idea where it is in 3D space. The controller now has sensors to measure rotation independent from acceleration, which will allow to make the mapping of action a good bit better then before, as it will get much harder to cheat the thing, but it will still be a lot of guessing of what the player did, instead of just taking the coordinates and bringing them into them game. So MotionPlus is more an intermediate step, then the solution to the 1:1 problem.
MotionPlus however has the advantage of actually being a mostly finished product, while all the other stuff is just techdemo stage and it could easily take a year or two till some actual games surface.
Re:Good enough is? (Score:3, Informative)
Oblivion's world larger? I don't think there's ever been a gaming world larger than Daggerfall's. It would take something like two weeks real time to walk from one end to the other without using fast travel.