When Nintendo finally revealed a game for the Wii, Wii Sports, it showed some extremely simple concepts that were familiar to everyone: With the Wii you can swing the wiimote and by extension swing a tennis racquet or feign a bowling toss and be bowling. Regardless of how well the technology actually worked in the end, people knew the Wii could do one thing that no other system could offer - let them use their controller as a tennis racquet. As for what the Xbox360 and PS3 offered around the same time, well, that wasn't particularly clear. Eventually they both focused on their consoles as HD entertainment gateways, a nebulous catch all term for a lot of features that people are probably only beginning to use in concert with each other. It seems obvious now that Nintendo's clarity of vision played no small role in selling their system to a broader audience.
I know, I know - it's too early to be complaining. And why am I giving these guys such a hard time? Who knows what wonderful applications they'll have ready come launch day? I think both Natal and Sony's air traffic controller system show immense promise. But I also think that once again these two companies are misjudging what mainstream consumers want. The videogame enthusiast will certainly care about how accurate Sony's controller is and the many applications for Microsoft's Natal, but everyone else just wants a new experience, and they need to be convinced that new experience is worth their while.
In the end, the Wii ended up providing a variety of different experiences and uses for it's unique controller. But we could only have imagined those experiences based on Nintendo's first reveal. What we knew was that Nintendo had a controller that you moved in order to play. The Wii channels and Virtual Console all came later. Giving people everything and the kitchen sink has, in my experience, defined Sony and Microsoft's console strategies for this generation. That works for a certain group of gamers. But to appeal to that wider population Nintendo has tapped into so successfully, Microsoft and Sony need to take off the grenade launcher, silencer, scope and laser sight that are currently attached to their motion controllers and show people one good reason why their controller will change our lives.
Tom Endo is couch potato who both revels in and relishes the inertia that a traditional videogame controller provides.
