ExFalsoQuodlibet
Member
TL;DR: Microsoft should have kept the Kinect and continue to build its next-gen platform on that and on the full (or mostly) digital option, only in a better way. On the other hand, Nintendo should drop the GamePad requirement, lower the price and focus on what really makes the company special.
The recent announcement by Microsoft of a Kinect-less Xbox One for the same price as the PS4 made me think about the actual value of the Kinect 2.0, and its nature of an optional accessory in contraposition to what it was supposed to be Microsoft’s vision. In particular, I tried to draw a comparison with the WiiU and its GamePad, another console that has a unique accessory attached, another console that could cost less without that accessory. Nintendo could do the same, right? But was that the right decision from Microsoft? My answer to the first question is yes, my answer to the second question is no: let me elaborate.
The standard way we consider a gaming console is a combination of a computer-like hardware that’s connected to the TV and a controller with buttons to input actions and directional pads/sticks to input movement: from the very first consoles it’s always been like that, and generations of gamers grew with these concepts, something that you cannot remove from passionate gamer’s heads from one day to another. In fact, motion controls are never seen well by passionate gamers, and external motion controls accessories like the first Kinect (Xbox 360) and the Playstation Move+Camera (PS3) did not sell in big numbers in comparison the their respective mother consoles. But how about the Wii? The original Wii sold less than the PS2, the best selling home console of all time, but reached the PS1 numbers and sold much more than the two other home consoles of the same generation: how’s that? Well, the Wii had a couple of aces up its sleeve: its price was lower than the competition and it introduced motion controls to humans on a large scale by adopting a motion controller as the standard controller and bundling Wii Sports with the console, which made practically everyone, from the core gamer to the grandpa that always considered video games a waste of time for kids, enjoy a game that was controlled by natural body motions.
Simple motion controls were an integral part of the Wii vision, and Nintendo chose to trade power for lower cost and an actual novel concept in a mass-market product, and it payed off. It alienated core gamers, especially Nintendo enthusiasts that thrived for an HD Mario from the very beginning of what was called the “next-gen”, but attracted a lot of other people with something that actually proved itself worthy of trying for those individual that we like to call “casuals”. The Wii showed that if you have a novel concept that can prove itself useful to a lot of people, it’s ok to sacrifice other things, like processing power, to push that concept: it’s not like Nintendo “forced” motion controls unto people, because people were able to not buy the Wii if they didn’t want to. It was a risky bet, but it payed off.
In my opinion Microsoft found itself in a similar situation, but from a different point of view: Nintendo had been suffering low sales and losses from their previous consoles, and they needed to spin things up, while Microsoft had been selling a successful console, and could have just stuck to that model, while improving the internals and providing next-gen graphics to their next platform (like Sony did). But somehow Microsoft chose to do a different thing, at least at the beginning, and from the Xbox One release I thought Microsoft was up to two things:
It’s also a matter of consistent vision: what Sony wanted to do was an empty-box console: they wanted to focus on the core gaming experience and target their next-gen console to gamers only. Microsoft could have done so much more than that, and it would have been consistent with their initial plan of a full-digital console: full-digital can be successful, even with DRMs, and Steam is there to prove that; the problem is HOW you deliver the full digital experience. Full digital means that you, as a publisher, can both enjoy lower costs of distribution and have a strict control of pricing over time, so Microsoft would have succeeded splendidly if they marketed their full digital console with statements like these:
Kinect could have been a game changer, and a real new platform for developing games, but Microsoft chicken’d out and decided to continue to treat it like an external accessory, and it will be, because with a tool like that in your sleeve a developer could do interesting things, if that tool is optional the same developer, that has time and cost constraints, will choose to ignore the extra and concentrate on the core experience, which will sadly be more of the same.
At this point one could ask “how about the WiiU”? The WiiU seems to be exactly what Microsoft could have done: lower price for lower specs, and a “novel experience” that is bundled with every console, and it’s not optional. Well, I don’t think it’s like that. First of all, Nintendo has been having serious marketing problems: targeting your console to kids (that don’t buy consoles themselves, but their parents do, and while kids are not always informed, parents usually know even less), so artificially restricting your market, while naming your console in a confusing way so that people don’t even know that it’s different from the Wii, is a marketing disaster. Also, for a machine that has specs almost on par with the previous gen (a little better I guess, but not by a large margin), 300 is still to much. Also, if I already have a Wii, what’s the point of spending another 300 to play the same games? My kids don’t care about graphics and I, casual parent who enjoyed the Wii but now is playing on the iPhone, most certainly don’t do.
Nintendo failed to understand where casuals were going, and after a generation of unnecessary motion controls forced on games that really didn’t need them, it is even gradually losing its faithful, AGED, user base that started loving Nintendo for their Marios and still buys Nintendo consoles for that reason. Ok, but what about the GamePad, isn’t that a novel experience that justifies the price? My answer is simply NO. The GamePad is cool, but it doesn’t create a novel experience, doesn’t add real value to the console in general, like moving your interface while waving you arm Minority Report-like or telling your console what to do with your voice, and can add value to some games, thanks to the touch screen (the Nintendo DS showed that) but it’s not like it has to be mandatory: even ZombieU, a game that uses the GamePad very well, could work without it. The GamePad adds the possibility of remote play but, again, that’s not something that should be mandatory: if I want the remote play option, because maybe I need it and my home layout allows me that, I can just buy the GamePad as an external accessory. From a developer standpoint, adding options for the GamePad wouldn’t be that hard: you simply have another screen and another simple input method, single touch and single gesture, you can render something on that screen if you want, or you can just ignore that and get remote play for free.
The WiiU gamepad is exactly what an external accessory should be: adds something to your gaming without radically changing the experience. And if Nintendo sold the WiiU with the excellent Pro Controller in place of the GamePad, it could have achieved a 250/280 console, eventually lowered after a year to 200, and at that price point even the skeptics would buy the WiiU just for playing that bunch of amazing exclusives. The WiiMote, or WiiUMote at this point, has become another cheap accessory, that one could already have around if he/she still has the Wii, and you can buy it to add another little something to your gaming - in my personal case the possibility to enjoy party games with friends. But the core WiiU experience should have been the one with the Pro Controller: you have HD Nintendo games, something that Nintendo enthusiasts, the people who actually sustain the company with their words and their money, have been wanting for years, and a comfortable, precise mean for controlling them. That’s not only it, obviously: third parties is the word, and Nintendo failed also on that, but by providing a cheaper, more focused console with stellar Nintendo games would have increased the sales, and with an head start like that the third parties would have come.
To wrap-up: while Sony was mostly perfect this time around, with a focused, clear vision and new black box that was perfectly marketed, Nintendo and Microsoft confused themselves and played a party game in which they did the opposite of what they should have been doing: one is sticking to their guns but these are unloaded, and it should drop them and start focusing again on what makes it different and gives it value; the other lost track of what it wanted to do and is destroying its platform by making stupid mistakes.
I understand that people mostly buy consoles for their exclusives, but it could be so much more than, and my impression is that only Sony is truly nailing it at this point.
The recent announcement by Microsoft of a Kinect-less Xbox One for the same price as the PS4 made me think about the actual value of the Kinect 2.0, and its nature of an optional accessory in contraposition to what it was supposed to be Microsoft’s vision. In particular, I tried to draw a comparison with the WiiU and its GamePad, another console that has a unique accessory attached, another console that could cost less without that accessory. Nintendo could do the same, right? But was that the right decision from Microsoft? My answer to the first question is yes, my answer to the second question is no: let me elaborate.
The standard way we consider a gaming console is a combination of a computer-like hardware that’s connected to the TV and a controller with buttons to input actions and directional pads/sticks to input movement: from the very first consoles it’s always been like that, and generations of gamers grew with these concepts, something that you cannot remove from passionate gamer’s heads from one day to another. In fact, motion controls are never seen well by passionate gamers, and external motion controls accessories like the first Kinect (Xbox 360) and the Playstation Move+Camera (PS3) did not sell in big numbers in comparison the their respective mother consoles. But how about the Wii? The original Wii sold less than the PS2, the best selling home console of all time, but reached the PS1 numbers and sold much more than the two other home consoles of the same generation: how’s that? Well, the Wii had a couple of aces up its sleeve: its price was lower than the competition and it introduced motion controls to humans on a large scale by adopting a motion controller as the standard controller and bundling Wii Sports with the console, which made practically everyone, from the core gamer to the grandpa that always considered video games a waste of time for kids, enjoy a game that was controlled by natural body motions.
Simple motion controls were an integral part of the Wii vision, and Nintendo chose to trade power for lower cost and an actual novel concept in a mass-market product, and it payed off. It alienated core gamers, especially Nintendo enthusiasts that thrived for an HD Mario from the very beginning of what was called the “next-gen”, but attracted a lot of other people with something that actually proved itself worthy of trying for those individual that we like to call “casuals”. The Wii showed that if you have a novel concept that can prove itself useful to a lot of people, it’s ok to sacrifice other things, like processing power, to push that concept: it’s not like Nintendo “forced” motion controls unto people, because people were able to not buy the Wii if they didn’t want to. It was a risky bet, but it payed off.
In my opinion Microsoft found itself in a similar situation, but from a different point of view: Nintendo had been suffering low sales and losses from their previous consoles, and they needed to spin things up, while Microsoft had been selling a successful console, and could have just stuck to that model, while improving the internals and providing next-gen graphics to their next platform (like Sony did). But somehow Microsoft chose to do a different thing, at least at the beginning, and from the Xbox One release I thought Microsoft was up to two things:
- they wanted to release a high-performance multimedia device that let users control their TV, and more than just games, via voice and motion in a natural way (sadly, Xbox One voice recognition is far from “natural” at this point, but the idea was there);
- they wanted to base the entire experience around the Kinect 2.0, both because the first Kinect sold relatively well, and felt novel and interesting like the Wii controller felt at the beginning, and because the idea of a smart console anticipates what most certainly will be the future of consumer electronics;
It’s also a matter of consistent vision: what Sony wanted to do was an empty-box console: they wanted to focus on the core gaming experience and target their next-gen console to gamers only. Microsoft could have done so much more than that, and it would have been consistent with their initial plan of a full-digital console: full-digital can be successful, even with DRMs, and Steam is there to prove that; the problem is HOW you deliver the full digital experience. Full digital means that you, as a publisher, can both enjoy lower costs of distribution and have a strict control of pricing over time, so Microsoft would have succeeded splendidly if they marketed their full digital console with statements like these:
- it’s full digital, so you can spend less for games: AAA starting from 49.99, and a wide range of games for all kinds of pockets, 29.99, 9.99, down to .99 and free-to-play;
- sales, sales, sales, weekly sales, summer sales, get notified when a game you want is on sale;
- start playing as soon as you download (Sony did this, it was simply short-sighted from Microsoft to not think about this from the very beginning), preload preorders, play demos and if you like the game you can buy it directly while you are playing it, keeping you save file;
- digitally lend games to friends, you lose access to the game for a short period of time so your friend can play it, experience it fully and then eventually buy it with a discount ("multiple console sales in the same circle of friends" anyone?);
- play your library wherever and whenever you want, save files and data are all synchronized in the cloud for free, the power of the cloud, cloud in cloud, clouds, double rainbows;
- you want to play disc based games, bought at that retail store that’s ripping you off and damaging both publishers and developers (ok, maybe not these exact words, but still)? Attach this cheap external optical drive and enjoy your physical library without the advantages of the digital purchase - you read that right: don’t include an optical drive, save on that to reach a lower price, and provide a cheap external USB drive that’s not a chore to switch if it breaks (and it will, because this stuff degrades over time);
Kinect could have been a game changer, and a real new platform for developing games, but Microsoft chicken’d out and decided to continue to treat it like an external accessory, and it will be, because with a tool like that in your sleeve a developer could do interesting things, if that tool is optional the same developer, that has time and cost constraints, will choose to ignore the extra and concentrate on the core experience, which will sadly be more of the same.
At this point one could ask “how about the WiiU”? The WiiU seems to be exactly what Microsoft could have done: lower price for lower specs, and a “novel experience” that is bundled with every console, and it’s not optional. Well, I don’t think it’s like that. First of all, Nintendo has been having serious marketing problems: targeting your console to kids (that don’t buy consoles themselves, but their parents do, and while kids are not always informed, parents usually know even less), so artificially restricting your market, while naming your console in a confusing way so that people don’t even know that it’s different from the Wii, is a marketing disaster. Also, for a machine that has specs almost on par with the previous gen (a little better I guess, but not by a large margin), 300 is still to much. Also, if I already have a Wii, what’s the point of spending another 300 to play the same games? My kids don’t care about graphics and I, casual parent who enjoyed the Wii but now is playing on the iPhone, most certainly don’t do.
Nintendo failed to understand where casuals were going, and after a generation of unnecessary motion controls forced on games that really didn’t need them, it is even gradually losing its faithful, AGED, user base that started loving Nintendo for their Marios and still buys Nintendo consoles for that reason. Ok, but what about the GamePad, isn’t that a novel experience that justifies the price? My answer is simply NO. The GamePad is cool, but it doesn’t create a novel experience, doesn’t add real value to the console in general, like moving your interface while waving you arm Minority Report-like or telling your console what to do with your voice, and can add value to some games, thanks to the touch screen (the Nintendo DS showed that) but it’s not like it has to be mandatory: even ZombieU, a game that uses the GamePad very well, could work without it. The GamePad adds the possibility of remote play but, again, that’s not something that should be mandatory: if I want the remote play option, because maybe I need it and my home layout allows me that, I can just buy the GamePad as an external accessory. From a developer standpoint, adding options for the GamePad wouldn’t be that hard: you simply have another screen and another simple input method, single touch and single gesture, you can render something on that screen if you want, or you can just ignore that and get remote play for free.
The WiiU gamepad is exactly what an external accessory should be: adds something to your gaming without radically changing the experience. And if Nintendo sold the WiiU with the excellent Pro Controller in place of the GamePad, it could have achieved a 250/280 console, eventually lowered after a year to 200, and at that price point even the skeptics would buy the WiiU just for playing that bunch of amazing exclusives. The WiiMote, or WiiUMote at this point, has become another cheap accessory, that one could already have around if he/she still has the Wii, and you can buy it to add another little something to your gaming - in my personal case the possibility to enjoy party games with friends. But the core WiiU experience should have been the one with the Pro Controller: you have HD Nintendo games, something that Nintendo enthusiasts, the people who actually sustain the company with their words and their money, have been wanting for years, and a comfortable, precise mean for controlling them. That’s not only it, obviously: third parties is the word, and Nintendo failed also on that, but by providing a cheaper, more focused console with stellar Nintendo games would have increased the sales, and with an head start like that the third parties would have come.
To wrap-up: while Sony was mostly perfect this time around, with a focused, clear vision and new black box that was perfectly marketed, Nintendo and Microsoft confused themselves and played a party game in which they did the opposite of what they should have been doing: one is sticking to their guns but these are unloaded, and it should drop them and start focusing again on what makes it different and gives it value; the other lost track of what it wanted to do and is destroying its platform by making stupid mistakes.
I understand that people mostly buy consoles for their exclusives, but it could be so much more than, and my impression is that only Sony is truly nailing it at this point.
