Sony and Microsoft are sooo screwed!
Well, no, they won’t collaps tomorrow or anything like that, but if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, this is what this year’s E3 has shown us: Sony and Microsoft have ceded control over where the game industry is headed to Nintendo.
Meet your doom
Think about it: In 2006 Nintendo turned the gaming world upside down with the Wii. Everybody assembled had a good laugh at the silly name and declared that motion control was a gimmick and a fad.
Four years and a couple of millions sold Wiis later, Microsoft and Sony spend an entire E3 to huckster their versions of motion control (no one’s calling Natal Kinect a fad, right?) while Nintendo quietly unveils The Next Big Thing: 3D gaming without glasses. On a portable. With a new Resident Evil, Solid Snake and Kid Icarus.
You get the picture.
In fact, this scenario reminds me somewhat of the phone industry, where you have one company out-innovating the rest of the industry while the other guys are playing catch-up to last years concepts.
All this certainly doesn’t mean that Microsoft or Sony will die – but they have relegated themselves to the position of follower. You don’t need to expect any paradigm shifts from either company for at least five more years, while Nintendo can use that time to grab mindshare from a new generation of gamers. When nobody remembers Marcus Fenix any more there will still be kids who love Mario.
…
(And before you get the impression that I’m a Nintendo fanboi who hates the other consoles: I just pre-ordered Killzone 3. So there.)
