Nintendo in 2007: It is clear to me now, more than ever before, that the Nintendo Wii is not a console for the hardcore crowd. The Wii Zapper, Mario Kart Wheel, and (to some extent) the Wii Balance Board are smoke and mirrors to grab the non-gaming audience. The desire to widen said audience is wonderful, and I am all for that, but Nintendo is not addressing long time gamers well with the Wii platform.
Is the system ever going to have a usable online gaming model? The Wii might be selling like hot cakes right now, but are people buying games? I know many gamers who own a Wii, but few own more than one or two games.
Non-game announcements aside, Super Mario Galaxy (is that an official name now?), Smash Bros. Brawl, Zelda Phantom Hourglass and Metroid Prime 3 were all fine specimens of Nintendo heavyweights, but what about third party content. Oh yea, that’s right, this is the same old Nintendo after all.
Sony in 2007: Like Microsoft, Sony put an executive on stage that made things a little awkward. Jack Tretton is to Sony what Jeff Bell is to Microsoft. Though, Tretton gets credit for the Kaz joke.
Considering last year's Sony keynote, I was not expecting much. As a PS3 owner, I was left very impressed with this year's dog and pony show. Their subliminal use of Home throughout the keynote was unique, and worked well. Sony needed to show games, and they had games in spades. I am not at all hip to the "timed exclusives" and their backwards way of not calling a multi-platform title a multi-platform title (hint: Haze and Unreal Tournament 3 will be on the Xbox 360).
Sony paraded the Worldwide Studios around well, the first party, and third party exclusive lineup is looking fantastic. Just like Microsoft, actually exactly like Microsoft, Sony showed off a montage of third party software. Wake me when the clip is over, please.
The big announcement was a "redesigned" PSP that looks strikingly like the one out now. It went on a diet, losing weight and is now thinner too! And... that’s about it. It has some nice technical additions but nothing drastic. Better battery life, added system cache and full TV-out capabilities are nice to be sure, but people were expecting more from a PSP redesign. I tried telling people it would not have a second analog stick, and look, it doesn't.
Article comments
1 - Rhett Mash
This was a good read. I concur with what you have to say about the conferences.
Considering where SONY are, they put up a good show bombarding us with games and good ones that too. My only gripe about their conference was that they used phrases like "coming out this _fiscal_ year" and "will release exclusive to the PS3" to skew the crowd into thinking the games would be hitting the shelves by this holiday and they would be exclusive to the PS3.
Nintendo tried desperately to show that they still have the gamers in mind and the third party support, but for the most the message they sent was that they loved the success of Brain Age and want to focus in that market.
Microsoft had the stuff, but sadly did not use it effectively to impress the audience. Yes, we get it that these games will be out by this holiday and the 360 is _the_ platform for maximizing your games choice, but we knew that already. I was frankly expecting more news like Resident Evil. Considering the position they are in, I thought it should be easier for them to break some of the exclusives *cough* FF13, MGS5 *cough*...
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