Recently I have been thinking about the future of the games market and where the industry will be going over the next year or so. Will companies ever understand that you can’t control each and every aspect of the market to be a success? It is unclear to me why major companies will go out of their way to capture a market that they initially didn’t set out to get approval from. The changes have been slow, but are now rising to the surface and being very noticeable. As most people are aware by now the Nintendo Wii has the casual market under its thumb with full control. To appease some of the casual crowds both Sony and Microsoft are developing motion controllers or camera based player controls to broaden the audience.
Looking at Nintendo as an example the focus has been to keep the casual market happy and once in a while throwing in a widely popular fan favorite game to keep them interested in the console. It looks like Sony and Microsoft are going in the opposite direction just to keep up or capture that part of the market that Nintendo has controlled for so long. As I see the changes happening in the next year or so, I am personally concerned about the content that will be coming from these two major companies.
Having a definitive plan of action when it comes to market control has to be vital now with the cost of research and development of games, programs, and software upgrades. If companies try to do too much at once they run the risk of losing the audience they once captured. I for one am all about change and new ideas, but at what cost? Will I be losing games that I would like to see on the console because that money is being spent on trying to appeal to the casual market?
The upcoming project Natal has already caused some waves in the industry with people being excited for what it could possibly do, but at what cost to the consumer? Are developers losing its freedom to create something new and being forced to create easy casual market content for Natal? It would be interesting to see the numbers behind the research and development costs for project Natal compared to big budget games. In my eyes Microsoft has notoriously become known as the company that likes to do soft product launches to get reactions from the consumer and make decisions on how to proceed or scrap projects. So in time we will see how long the idea of project Natal will last (does anyone remember Totem Ball for the vision camera, imagine that type of game for project Natal). Can Microsoft keep its promise of all the great functionality of what is projected for project Natal, like facial recognition and hand movements to control the dashboard?
Overall I don’t believe both Microsoft and Sony are doing the right thing with trying to keep up with casual market control over Nintendo. So when the announcements are made about the first games for project Natal, I am sure there will be a lot of backlash from the core audience that currently play on the console. Only time will really tell what will become of project Natal and the audience that it will attract. Will it be worth the investment that Microsoft put into it when it comes down to it, that will be something that we all will have to wait and see for ourselves.
Yeah I think it will be a big hit or miss with the direction that both Microsoft and Sony are going, at the moment, Natal is looking to be little more promising with the backing of major names in the industry but once again, only time will tell…
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