Now that E3 is all done with, and since I only gave you 4 video game reviews, I would like to get back to reviewing video games. But right now you caught me in the middle of going through the Fable series (currently a triology, but that will change within a year), and once I go through the side quests and achievements that I want, I will be ready to give them a proper review. Until then, to hold you over, I'd like to discuss an observation I made while watching E3. I was watching E3 over the Internet through GameTrailers.com. On the side of the streamming video was a chat where viewers could input comments. As XBox was introducing Kinect games, and Play Station was introducing Move games I saw comments that said, "Kinect is ruining XBox" and "Move is ruining PlayStation." The easy way to dismiss these comments is that they from fanboys of the other consoles, just wanting to get the upper hand on the fanboys of other consoles. But I did see more generic comments on how there is too much focus, maybe even the term "dependancy," on motion control. People are complaining about the new use of motion controls, crying out to go back to the 2 analog stick, 4 shoulder buttons and 4 face button method. I believe they fail to see not only the technological advances , but also the advances in gaming itself. So I'm going to spend this blog justifying motion control as an important movement in video games. Where should we start? We could technically start all the way back to the 1st generation of consoles, but we'll keep it simple for those who do not know the whole history of video games. Let's start with the last generation, the 6th generation.
But before I go into that, we're going to need to define a definition, and then separate into to categories. The term is "gamer." The term "gamer" arose when when we realized the term "nerd" no longer worked. The stereotype that people who play a lot of video gamers were nerds was simply not always true. Someone could always play video games and not be a nerd, and someone could be a nerd and not play video games, or only play video games a little. So the term "gamer" arose to describe someone who played a lot of video games (besides, it has a more positive connotation than "nerd"). But still, the term is too broad. How do we differ the guy who can play any Halo game on the highest difficulty with all the skulls from the 3-year old kid who is playing Sesame Street and Disney Land on Kinect? How do we separate the Level 85 World of Warcraft player from the middle-aged woman who plays Solitaire and Hearts on her computer during her lunch break? How do we differentiate between the person who can play all instruments on expert for both Guitar Hero and Rock Band from the elderly man who is playing Wii Sports for the "exercise" class at his retirement home? So we categorize the term "gamer" into two categories with two news terms and two new definitions. You have your "casual gamers" and your "hardcore gamers" (which I've seen shortened to "core gamers"). Your casual gamers are your the kids playing Sesame Street and Disneyland, the middle-aged playing your basic computer games during lunch break, and your elderly playing fitness games, and many other such examples. Your casual gamers are the ones who are playing merely and purely for entertainment reasons. They are not into keeping track, earning achievements/trophies, or improving. Playing video games is more of a social thing, something you do when people get together. They play video games in the "spare time of their spare time," if there is such a thing. It's not a top prioroity, and they put other hobbies before it. On the other hand, you have your hardcore gamers, or your core gamers. While they still play for entertainment, they take a more serious approach to their entertainment. They do want to improve themselves, so they can play at the highest difficulty. So they do keep track of how well they are doing, and push themselves to do their best. So it is typical of them to be concerned about achievements or trophies. Video games are the first thing they do with free time, even making free time just for video games. Because they have played so much and push themselves to do better, they will be the ones who have the highest level character(s) in RPG games, they will be the sharp-shooters and snipers in FPS games, and they will be the ones who can play any instrument on expert when it comes to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Now that we know these terms, everything else will make sense.
Now we can take our step back to the 6th generation. The 6th generation of video game consoles began with Sega taking the lead with the Sega Dreamcast. The Sega Dreamcast set the standard for the 6th generation, display graphics and gameplay that was new for the time. But the Dreamcast's glory would be short-lived. Sony's PlayStation 2 entered soon after and overshadowed the Dreamcast. That, and Microsoft entering the video game race with the XBox, not only killed the Dreamcast, but also brought to an end Sega's long run at being a first-party, console-making developer. Nintendo, seeing this, knew they would receive the same fate if they did not keep up. Behind in the scenes, they were working on a motion-control system, which we know today as the Wii, but at the time, it wasn't ready. The Nintendo 64 was outdated compared to the XBox and PlayStation 2, and wouldn't last much. So Nintendo released the GameCube, a system with a controller similar to the other systems, but different in everything from graphics to disc size. This system was merely meant to hold Nintendo over until the production of the Wii came to fruition. Although Nintendo did later on admit this, no one needed to say it because everyone knew it. Because of this, Nintendo lost many of its core gamers. All their core gamers went to either PlayStation 2 or XBox. The only hardcore gamers that remained were Nintendo fanboys, who clinged on the Nintendo franchises of old, like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong and Kirby. Nintendo would not die out, but it would fall behind in the console race, with the XBox and PlayStation 2 neck and neck for the lead.
Then came the current generation of gaming, the 7th generation. Microsoft took the lead by quickly ditching its original XBox console with a short life and introducing the XBox 360 in November 2005. Sony would respond to their archrivals in exactly a year with the PlayStation 3. The PS3 rivaled the XBox in many ways, yet had some unique features of its. Still, neither system got a tight grip on the hardcore gamer base. Each fanboy just stuck to the same first party developer of their last system. Then a week after PS3 release, Nintendo joined in the 7th generation with their new system, the Wii. Unlike the PS3, the Wii did not concentrate on matching its rivals. One could tell because a lot of aspects of the new console, from graphics capabilities to hard drive capacity, lacked greatly from the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. Instead, it took the industry in a whole new direction. They introduced the video game world to motion controls. And then the console race went from there.
So where did go from there? Well, Nintendo was ridiculed. A lot of people, from Microsoft and Sony, to the XBox and PlayStation fanboys, from the critics and to the hardcore gamers, pointed and laughed at the Wii. Even third party developers pointed and laughed, followed by them walking out, deciding not to make their third party games for the Wii. It would seem that the Wii would fall even further behind in the console wars, even maybe dying out like the Dreamcast. So it would seem. But that wasn't the case. You have to remember that video gaems have been called everything from entertainment to art, in the end, the video game industry is ultimately a business. And as true with all businesses, it comes down to the income and the profits, in short, the money. Within 2 years, the Wii would sell more than the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 combined. When it came the numbers, both in consoles sold and income, Wii was the leader. There were a lot of reasons for this. Probably because the new technology the Wii offered wowed everyone. It's also possible it sold so well because it was the most affordable of the 3 consoles. But I believe the biggest reason was because Nintendo knew who its target market was: the casual gamer. Nintendo knew it became first party developer for the casual gamer. So it asked itself, "What could Nintendo do to reach more casual gamers, and even make people who aren't gamers casual gamers?" The result was the Wii, and it's all thanks to the Wii motion controls. Since the motion controls were new technology and a new way to game, everyone had to learn how to use them and adapt them, even the hardcore gamers. So this put everyone, even the hardcore gamers, on an equal level. And so Nintendo strengthened its casual gamer audience by turning new gamers to casual gamers. This led to the hardcore gamers to cling to an even stronger allegiance to the other consoles.
Let me best explain this by using a metaphor. Remember high school? Remember in high school there was the popular group, the cool kids, the in-crowd? Now with the title "popular," you would think that means that this group would be the biggest group. But that's not true. In fact, it was usually the smallest group, only containing about 1-2% of the your class's student body (maybe 5% if you had a small, private school). There might have been bigger groups of friends, but they weren't the popular ones. That was that small group of cool kids, the in-crowd. They were the ones who said what was cool or not. Even if the majority of students liked it, if the in-crowd shot it down, it was uncool. Even though the popular group was the minority, they had a voice like they were the majority. That's what happened with the 7th generation gaming consoles. The hardcore gamers, both the XBox 360 fanboys and PlayStation 3 fanboys, were the cool kids/in-group/popular group. Even though there were the less XBox 360 gamers and PS3 gamers, they got control of the third party developers and became the voice of power. And they harshly ridiculed and criticized the Wii. The casual gamers of the Wii, although the majority, were picked on and pushed around, as if they were a minority. And as the Wii casual gamers grew in number, and possible strength, the XBox360 and PS3 hardcore took a harder grip on the on their power, throwing more criticisms. Even the critics joined, hardly paying attention to the Wii.
This isn't the end, though. This is where it gets interesting. What happened next was jealousy. Wii got jealous of the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Although leading in hardware sales and financial income, the Wii wanted to be like the XBox360 and PS3, being popular with the critics and third party developers. XBox and PlayStation got jealous of Wii. Although having the third party developers and critics standing behind them and supporting them with power, they wanted to be like the Wii, in numbers sold and income earned. Here's a better way to look at it. Wii became jealous of XBox and PlayStation because they had the hardcore gamers, and Nintendo wanted the hardcore gamers, too. PlayStation and XBox got jealous of Wii because it had the large audience that is the casual gamers, and they wanted the casual gamers, too.
At E3 in 2010, the big 3 first party developres went out to appease the others' audience. Nintendo went to appeal to the hardcore gamers, and XBox and PlayStation went to to appeal to the casual gamers. It wasn't pretty. Both XBox and PlayStation realized that it was Wii's motion controls that pulled it in the casual gamer audience, so both made their own motion control, both the hardware and the software. And where the one excelled the other one hurted, for XBox had good hardware, but bad software, and PlayStation had good software, but bad hardware. Let me explain. XBox's Kinect clearly was the best hardware. They made a sensor with cameras and a microphone, so there was no need for a controller. Clearly a technological advance for the modern day. The software, however, lacked. Most of their games seemed to be a form of a Wii game (for example, instead of "Wii Sports," there was "Kinect Sports"). All their Kinect games did reach to the casual gamer, but in return, they neglected their hardcore gamer for them. At E3 2009, XBox did introduce hardcore games for the hardcore gamer, but they were your standard controller, with no change. XBox had accidently created a dicotomy in their company. It was either casual gamers with Kinect, or hardcore gamers with a controller, but it could never be both. There was a clear, distinctive barrier between the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers of XBox, and the decider was either the controller or the Kinect. That's what I mean when I say XBox had the hardware, but not the software. PlayStation had the opposite problem. They knew how to naturally incorporate the new Move into the software they had. On the day it was released, you could get updates to many old games to include Move. Altogether, the smartest move (no put intended) PlayStation made was making motion control in their games optional. If you want to use motion control, go ahead, but if you like the classic PlayStation controller, stick with it. Yet the hardware lacked because, let's face it, the PlayStation Move controller is virtually the Wii's controllers except with more buttons and colorful bulb at the end. Heck, I have a habit of accidently calling the PlayStation Move Navigator a Nunchuck because they look and act so much the same. With the Wii clone games, you're pretty much playing an HD Wii. Will someone be willing to $100-200 more dollars to simply play Wii with HD graphics? Probably not. But maybe we're looking at this in hindsight. Maybe if we look at it in the bigger picture, as if it were only the first small steps forward, we'd get a better idea.
At E3 2010, Nintendo didn't do any better. They wanted to reach out to the hardcore gamers, but their idea of reaching out to hardcore gamers was just reaching out to the Nintendo fanboys, whether it be strengthened their relationship to the fanboys they still had, or winning back the old fanboys they lost during the GameCube and Wii fiasco. So what did we see? We saw another Mario games, another Donkey Kong game, another Zelda game, another Metroid game, another Kirby game, another Star Fox game, and they even reached far back as Kid Icarus for the 3DS. While this would technically somewhat count for the hardcore gamer, it is really the hardcore Nintendo fanboy gamer, which is a small fraction of hardcore gamers. What Nintendo needed to do was secure the third party developers on their side (and not just Activision). But I will say it again, look at the bigger picture, instead of the hindsight of back then. This may have been a small step in the big picture.
That's why I was so psyched and excited for E3 this year. All 3 first party developers were now making the big steps to what they wanted to achieve. This year at E3, XBox shrunk the gap between hardcore gamers on controller and casual gamers on Kinect. The best examples are Mass Effect 3, Forza 4 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. All these games are labeled "Better with Kinect" because while they don't require Kinect, Kinect does enhance the playing experience. In Mass Effect 3, a player can choose dialogue by speaking it and a player can command his CPU allies with voice commands. In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, weapon customization, both the creating and testing, can be done through Kinect. With Forza 4, a player still drives with a standard controller or a wheel controller, but he looks at his mirrors by turning his head, using Kinect. Maybe "Better with Kinect" is the way XBox needs to go, as PlayStation Move did. But hold on before I more onto PlayStation Move. There are games that do look promising that require Kinect. E3 showed us Dance Central 2, Kinect Star Wars, Ryse, Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking and Fable: The Journey. But if you look at XBox's website, there's more. Check out Rise of Nightmare and Gunstringer, both games that are Kinect-required, but look like some pretty good story, gameplay and graphics. Kinect definitely has a future, for games that both require Kinect and games that Kinect makes better. PlayStation also took a step forward by closing the gap between casual gamers and hardcore gamers with Move. With Move in their hardcore games, they are introducing more cinematic games to the casual gamer. At the same time, for the hardcore gamer, they keep their PlayStation Six-axis controller for the hardcore gamer who is not comfortable with the Move.
At E3 in 2010, Nintendo made the right step towards getting back the hardcore gamers with the Wii U. They knew they were missing the hardcore gamers, and they knew why they were missing them. First, hardcore gamers like good graphics. Nintendo's Wii U has 1080p graphic capabilities. Second, hardcore gamers like the standard controller. While at first glace we might all see the new Wii U controller as an iPad with buttons and knobs, it is virtually the same as XBox and PS's Six-axis controller, except it has a good-sized touch screen in the middle. Just like the XBox controller and PS Six-Axis, it has 2 analog sticks, 4 face buttons and 4 shoulder buttons. Third, hardcore gamers like third party games. Nintendo knew that there was too reasons the third party developers were not interested in Nintendo: the Wii lacked the graphic capabilities and the online abilities. As I said before, Nintendo's Wii U has 1080p graphics. They also did fix the online capabilites. Once all of that was said and done, Nintendo gladly showed us 10 big name third party developers behind the Wii U, and all these game developers already had game ideas. When the Wii U is released, I believe the hardcore gamers will cautiously and slowly return to Nintendo.
In conclusion, in the beginnning of the 7th generation of video games, Nintendo introduced motion control and introduced new people to gaming as casual gamers. In response, XBox and PlayStation strengthened their relationship with the hardcore gamers. A few years into the 7th generation, each console got jealous of the opposite side, wanting to expand their audience into the other gamer population. This produced XBox 360 Kinect, PlayStation 3 Move and Nintendo Wii U. While rocky at first, all 3 are learning to utilize their new technology to their audience. Kinect is not ruining XBox 360 and Move is not ruining PlayStation 3. Instead, it will improve their systems once utilized correctly. In fact, I would say that XBox 360 Kinect and PlayStation 3 Move is like a half generation, like the 7 1/2 generation. It's not a new system, but a hardware addition to the current system that brings it more up-to-date. Kinect and Move is the future of the XBox and PlayStation, respectively. In a CNN interview after E3, Sony told CNN they were committed to the PS3 to at least 2013-2014, and Microsoft said they were committed to XBox360 until 2015-2016. I think the introduction of Move and Kinect prove this. So hardcore gamers who complain about motion controls will learn to adapt with to the new controls, just like they learned to adapt to 4 analog sticks and 4 shoulder buttons. Heck, I believe if were in some alternative universe where touch screens, voice commands and motion controllers came before analog sticks and buttons, we'd hear the hardcore gamers complain, "Analog sticks and buttons are ruining gaming!" Besides, I seriously doubt these hardcore gamers will completely stop playing video games if it was all motion control. As for Nintendo's Wii U, we'll have to wait and see at E3 2012 if it is just half generation step into the 7 1/2 generation, or if it is a true next generation console for the 8th generation of gaming. That will also determine the fate of Nintendo. It will either bring back the hardcore gamer, or it will be forever branded the console of casual gamers.
Alright, back to reviews for "The Spoiler Review." As promised, we'll start the Fable series with, of course, the original Fable for the original XBox.
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