E3 2009 is over and hundreds of marketing people are writing up their show summaries, each one trying to show how their product or company dominated the show (been there, done that). Certainly, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo expended a lot of effort and no little sum of money trying to show through press conferences, booths, interviews, videos, etc. that each of their respective consoles was the ‘bestest with the mostest’. (There were also handheld-related announcements but we’re focusing on consoles for now.)
"Pick me!" "No, pick me!"
Microsoft made the most announcements and showed they were serious about going after Nintendo. Sony has the best pure technology in their system and continued to posit they were the best company to bet on in the long term of their ‘ten year plan.’ And Nintendo has the best market share and, while not wowing anyone at the show, continued to execute on what they do best while preparing to sell into their huge existing audience with technology that requires no major change on the part of their customers and will be packaged with software that is almost guaranteed to be a major hit.
Does the last sentence of the preceding paragraph reveal too much about which company Concepticate thought ‘won’ E3 2009 no matter what industry insiders and the press said? Regardless, we’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of each system following the show.
Microsoft
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Unknowns:
Sony
Nintendo
One announcement that gamers, publishers, and analysts were all hoping for was a price drop–but none of the manufacturers announced a change in their price point. Nintendo could drop their price if they felt threatened since their SKU is the most profitable per unit, but they don’t feel threatened. Sony is pushing for greater profitability so as much as analysts would love to see $100 drop (and their sales would certainly benefit!) it’s not happening in the near term. And Microsoft has already come out with the lower-priced Arcade SKU so they feel they’ve addressed price by creating a lower-featured model although we haven’t seen the Arcade flying off shelves.
Sans a price drop, Wii continues to lead in sales and we don’t see this changing anytime soon. It remains to be seen what a bundled Xbox 360 or PS3 with a motion control system will cost but unless they are sold at a loss they won’t be cheaper than a Wii, which includes a motion controller in the core SKU, and presumably by the time Natal or the Sony product ships Nintendo will be shipping Motion Plus bundled with every new Wii.
Finally, and this can’t be understated, the killer app for Motion Plus is a known quantity that is a perfect fit for the owners of the 50MM existing Wiis: Wii Sports Resort. The Sony controller looks to work well for swordfighting, shooting, ‘mouse’ actions, and other traditional gaming gestures, and Project Natal will work great for exergames, dance games, and some sports games and casual games. But neither system has announced a killer app to beat Wii Sports Resort.
As much as core gamers continue to put down the Wii, Nintendo continues to sell millions of Wii systems week after week, month after month, expanding the demographic of console gamers with each year. Microsoft and Sony have aspirations to do the same thing, but until they show they can do it, Nintendo is still the king. Nothing that was shown at E3 did anything to change that, as exciting as it was to see the Beatles, Uncharted 2, Steven Spielberg, God of War 3, et al.
Here’s the equation:
Proven gaming quotient + largest existing audience + ’small, quiet, and affordable’ = the champ until dethroned
Having said that, we’re looking forward to someone topping Nintendo–the more the ante is upped, the better it is for gamers everywhere.
Just finished watching Microsoft’s press conference–if you weren’t there or missed the stream you can watch the replay on GameSpot here. MS showed a good lineup of content for both games and videos, and the Facebook and Twitter additions could be nice too, although I’m waiting to see more information on how you input your updates and Tweets before passing judgment.
Most of the MS games played to their core demographic rather than expanding their base–Alan Wake looked great (really nice particle effects!), but more Halo, Splinter Cell, Crackdown, etc. just continues to feed the current audience. That’s all good, but the Concepticate philosphy is more focused on new and different ways to engage with players.
Tony Hawk Ride, with its new skateboard controller, was a very logical extension of the TH franchise utilizing the Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Wii Fit pack-in controller philosophy. Technologically it should be straightforward to execute and it should do well.
But the part I was looking to most, of course, was the Project Natal 3D camera announcement. We all knew it was coming, although I wasn’t privy to the fact that it had a microphone and voice recognition as a component. The game demos that were shown were very competitive with the other 3D camera sensing technology that’s out there, and they had better graphics than other games that have been shown in the motion gaming space. As expected, the 3D camera (whatever they end up calling it) probably won’t be available until late 2010. Developers are supposed to start getting dev kits now.
Microsoft showed good tech, but they didn’t reveal any killer app that will drive people to the Xbox 360 for motion gaming in the manner the Wiimote and Balance Board have driven players to the Wii. This doesn’t mean they don’t have better stuff up their sleeve, but I have a feeling if they had anything great already in development they would have teased it at the press conference.
Looking at the games they did show via videos or live demos we saw a racing game where the daughter was driving the car using her hands while the Dad performed tire changing duties in the pits, with all the actions, including shifting, being mimed. I didn’t take good notes during the video section, but there was also a skateboarding game with the player miming skateboard motions on the living room carpet, video recognition of people to call up their Live avatars, and gesture-controlled onscreen navigation. A kid also scanned in his skateboard to create a virtual deck he could use in the skateboard game. However, all this footage looked conceptual, created to show the possibilities of the system rather than being video of games actually in development.
"I'm a model pretending to be a teen skate kid"
Moving to the motion games actually demoed, we mostly saw ‘2D-ish’ outline avatars a la the old Super Punch Out game rather than full 3D avatars. The 3D camera was being used for Z-axis data (e.g., your foot being kicked forward at a ball) but for the most part the experience was similar to the soccer ball game in Wii Fit. The kickball/volleyball game Ricochet shown was like the Wii Fit soccer game but with the option to use hands and feet as well as your head and with the velocity of your limb or head having an appropriate effect on the ball coming toward you.
On the plus side, the girl doing the demoing looked like she got a good workout and there are many more game options available if you don’t have to stand atop a static Balance Board. I should add there was some 3D avatar control demoed with Natal creative director Kudo Tsunoda (the ex-EA guy from the Fight Night franchise) controlling his Live avatar with his body. As is typical with this, the software had difficulty keeping his skeleton intact when he turned his body, but there wasn’t much delay.
They also showed Splat, a kind of party painting game that allowed players to splash virtual paint on the screen and create 2D stencils of their body (they made a very cute elephant silhouette using a guy and a girl and a couple pillows)–if they had 30 such games packed together they’d have something every bit as entertaining as Wii Fit.
Lastly, Peter Molyneux (the best pitchman in videogames) showing a video of a Lionhead project called Milo that featured a virtual boy with whom you can interact. This was very much a tech demo, but had some fun applications, especially if you imagined it embedded in something like Fable 3–I would be first in line to play that game if that’s the intention.
Playing in a fishpond with Milo
If I sound underwhelmed by the concept, I’m not. Microsoft showed they are competitive with others in the 3D camera space and with their superior resources and graphics they showed a higher fidelity (at least visually) experience than anyone else has demonstrated. And now it’s announced so developers not working for the major publishers can get into the game with dev kits so we all can get our hands on the technology first hand. While there was some excess hyperbole (not unusual for a press conference) I really do think motion games provide new possibilities for fun while providing exercise benefits, and that’s all to the good for the games industry.
For more reading, you can also check out the VentureBeat article on the conference–I lifted the two images above from them so it’s good manners to credit them.
Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat wrote a nice article today on Omek’s Motion Game System announcement that I helped put together. Dean knows the 3D camera space so he was able to quickly summarize goings on in the category in addition to relating our news.
Here’s a quote from the article:
Omek, based in Bet Shemesh, Israel, isn’t developing the cameras itself. It will use cameras from companies such as 3DV Systems (rumored to have been purchased by Microsoft), PrimeSense and Canesta. Omek differs from its software rivals in that it is making its own games as well as technology. The company contends it can do 3-D skeleton-tracking in real time. Sony and Nintendo can capture the movements of parts of your body, but they can’t capture all of the subtleties of an entire body in motion. The cameras it uses can detect how far away an object is at any given time. They can thus detect movement and translate those movements into the commands used to control games. So you can have very realistic user interfaces for game consoles. If you punch at the camera, for example, your character in a boxing game will do the same on screen. Janine Kutliroff, chief executive, said the company has built its technology from the ground up and will make the initial games for PCs. The technology and camera could be adapted to game consoles at some point. It uses infrared technology in the cameras.
Omek, based in Bet Shemesh, Israel, isn’t developing the cameras itself. It will use cameras from companies such as 3DV Systems (rumored to have been purchased by Microsoft), PrimeSense and Canesta. Omek differs from its software rivals in that it is making its own games as well as technology. The company contends it can do 3-D skeleton-tracking in real time. Sony and Nintendo can capture the movements of parts of your body, but they can’t capture all of the subtleties of an entire body in motion.
The cameras it uses can detect how far away an object is at any given time. They can thus detect movement and translate those movements into the commands used to control games. So you can have very realistic user interfaces for game consoles. If you punch at the camera, for example, your character in a boxing game will do the same on screen.
Janine Kutliroff, chief executive, said the company has built its technology from the ground up and will make the initial games for PCs. The technology and camera could be adapted to game consoles at some point. It uses infrared technology in the cameras.
Virtual Worlds also had an article on the announcement today:
Omek Interactive announced today that it was using its Motion Game System to create games using 3D cameras for movement control. Omek isn’t developing its own cameras. Instead its system is hardware and platform agnostic, potentially integrating with both PC projects and console games. This isn’t directly virtual worlds-related (Omek seems focused on the games space), but any development of new interfaces, particularly like these, are of at least some interest. Mitch Kapor’s Handsfree 3D, for example, has been working on 3D camera interfaces for Second Life, though I haven’t heard anything from the company since fall. More commercial applications, like games, could stimulate development and acceptance of new interfaces for 3D environments. If nothing else, it seems to be appealing to someone at Microsoft, which is rumored to have acquired 3D camera manufacturer 3DV Systems earlier this year.
Omek Interactive announced today that it was using its Motion Game System to create games using 3D cameras for movement control. Omek isn’t developing its own cameras. Instead its system is hardware and platform agnostic, potentially integrating with both PC projects and console games. This isn’t directly virtual worlds-related (Omek seems focused on the games space), but any development of new interfaces, particularly like these, are of at least some interest.
If you’re in the games industry and motion games sound interesting, drop me a line to set up meeting and take a look at Omek’s software.
As a person working in motion games myself I’ve followed Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 since it came out. The game itself is atrocious. I bought a copy at launch and it was worse than I could have imagined–bad controls, bad graphics, poor use of the Balance Board, and just really poorly designed and implemented mini-games that showed all the originality of a cloned flock of sheep.
But aside from that quibble, the game has sold very well to the huge Wii Fit audience (which itself is approaching 17M WW according to VG Chartz). Five hundred thousand units is nothing to sneeze, especially for a game that must have been inexpensive to develop. I can’t imagine the Jillian Michaels license itself could have been that expensive upfront although for her sake I hope she gets a good royalty since she is the sole selling point of the game other than the package’s white box look that suggests a Wii Fit lineage.
Here’s an excerpt from GameDaily’s ‘Chart Toppers’ article on the game:
According to the NPD, Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009 was the fourteenth best selling title for the month of January 2009. The game was the fifth best selling title on the Wii console over that period. Since launching in October 2008, Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009 has gone on to sell over a half million copies. “Not all consumers might be aware of what Wii Fit is, but most weight conscious women know Jillian Michaels as a brand,” said Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. “She’s branded as a fit person who helps people lose weight and that brand affinity could help more people see the Balance Board as less of a video game gizmo and more of a health product.”
According to the NPD, Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009 was the fourteenth best selling title for the month of January 2009. The game was the fifth best selling title on the Wii console over that period. Since launching in October 2008, Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009 has gone on to sell over a half million copies.
“Not all consumers might be aware of what Wii Fit is, but most weight conscious women know Jillian Michaels as a brand,” said Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. “She’s branded as a fit person who helps people lose weight and that brand affinity could help more people see the Balance Board as less of a video game gizmo and more of a health product.”
If you put the pieces together you have to realize the power of the exergaming market. Thus far it’s only shown its strength on Wii titles but the demand is there. Which developer is going to be the first to create quality titles that not only replicate the fun of Wii Fit but go beyond it?
I’m working on an initiative with my friends at Omek Interactive that I certainly expect to rise to that level, but there are other companies exploring the space as well. There are huge numbers of people who want to combine fitness benefits with interactive entertainment, and I don’t think games that are based around exercise routines are the only way to tap into this demand. We’ll see what comes out this year but I think 2010 is when we’ll start to see some really quality stuff.
When you’re thinking of game concepts, don’t leave player movement out of the equation. There are tons of ways to incorporate it, from the Wii controllers to the new 3D cameras that capture player movement. It brings new challenges (like requiring floor space) but what new videogame opportunity doesn’t?
