Credit: Microsoft Corp.
This year's edition of Electronic Entertainment Expo(E3), a venue where platform holders, publishers, and developers show their wears for the coming year, had a decidedly casual feel to it. Which may seem counterintuitive, given that the people who attend E3 are a bunch of jaded games journalist who's readership are made up of the hardcore audience. But the video game industry is in the business of making money and Nintendo has shown everyone the path to making obscene amounts with the Wii capturing the huge, as yet untapped, casual market. Now Sony and Microsoft are playing catchup with their own spin on motion control.
Sony's Move controller promises an experience similar to that on the Wii but with better precision and in HD, something that core gamers often complain about with Wii titles.
Credit: SCEA
Microsoft, on the other hand, is ditching the controller altogether and is championing gesture based gaming with their Kinect offering. Using a combination of inferred cameras and voice recognition, Microsoft hopes this controller-less system will attract an even wider audience who still find the Wii-mote a little too daunting.
Most of the core gamers are apprehensive of this sudden shift by the industry away from their loyal fans, but in my opinion, the more people playing games, the better. Recently a friend of mine bought a Wii and is actually playing it. This from a person who probably hasn't owned a console in years and would not describes themselves as a gamer. I cannot express the joy this brings me.
One game I'm looking forward to is Dance Central, from the folks who brought us Rock Band, it can actually teach you how to dance. I hope these new technologies will spur more innovation and allow a broader range of games and that is good for all gamers.