It’s all in the… timing.
Have Microsoft allowed too much time to pass between announcing Natal/Kinect and its release? From all the chatter at E3 it seems the veneer has worn thin and people have already moved on to the next big thing.
It’s been a few years since anyone at Head First attended E3. We tried it for a while, went along with the belief that decisions and impressions were made in equal quantity and that we would break into the States with our creative vision for how video games ought to be marketed.
The truth, however, is that E3 is a show for the public. It is designed to impress the journalists who then trumpet the products they fall for. It really is an amazing event for bringing the spectacle of gaming to the attention of the world.
Last year, that spectacle revolved mainly around Natal, a new take on technology championed by Nintendo through their groundbreaking Wii system. Natal, by Microsoft, blew everything else out of the water by appearing larger than life and selling itself on a dream.
It was a dream that managed to make Nintendo look as though they were just mumbling in their sleep. Here was the true vision of motion control, the future in vivid technicolor.
Microsoft had done what few people credit it capable of doing, they’d pulled an Apple out of the air.
Move on a year and much of the talk about Natal centres around the renaming to ‘Kinect’ an ugly portmanteau to many; and around fake families showing off the technology in demos that many commentators are labelling as disappointing. The buzz, hype and excitement of a year ago has been replaced by reality.
Practical limitations for gaming have been raised over this past year and the answers don’t sit well with the hardcore. Sony, touting their own motion controller now neatly called ‘Move’ are on full assault, pointing out that games need buttons and who wants to be seen playing with invisible guns like a five year old.
It’s clever marketing on Sony’s part who were seen as the poor cousins only last year with technology totally lacking in ‘wow’.
But timing really is everything and now the playing field seems a whole lot more level.
If Microsoft had announced, wowed and released within months rather than a year and a half then maybe they could have carried us along just as Apple seem to with each of their visionary but crippled devices.
That, however, isn’t the case and we’ve had a year to consider what we want (if anything) from motion controllers and are in a position to make calm, informed decisions. That means the money men must also address the economics of these devices, counting them against percentages of current ownership rather than, as once hoped, driving hard core consoles into the Wii owning public where fake families have been happily jumping up and down, waving their primitive sticks in the air, for years.
You’ve hit the nail on the head here. Last year’s unveiling of Natal involved too much smoke and mirrors, to the point that most reasonable people knew that it would be next to impossible for Microsoft to pull off half of what they were showing—like scanning your skate deck to use in game. What we’re seeing now in live game demos is impressive, but slightly less impressive than the make believe they tried to sell us on.
I can halfway understand why Microsoft showed Natal so early, they were able to scoop Sony on their—ridiculous looking—motion controller. But did it really give them a market advantage? With an 18 month reveal-to-rollout window and brand-name change in the middle of that, consumers are likely to lose most of the interest they have in the product before it hits the streets. Especially now that people are starting to become bored with the novelty motion controls in general.
From a marketing standpoint, re-revealing Natal a year later as Kinect has diminished any brand recognition that they have built over the last twelve months. Microsoft had massive recognition with Natal, it was ambiguous sounding, plus it’s easy to say and spell. To replace it with Kinect, an intentional misspelling of a commonly used word reeks of Web 2.0 wannabe-ism. I predict that when Kinect launches this fall people will still be asking for Natal when they stop by their local electronics store.
Overall, this whole Natal debacle points out one of my biggest pet peeves with the gaming industry at the moment, the over-marketing of games and products. Take E3 for instance, half of the big titles that were revealed had already been announced months ago, and they won’t even come out until sometime in 2011. As a gamer, I get so tired of seeing game-footage beforehand that I don’t even feel the need to play most games when they do finally hit the street. It’s time for the industry to start marketing smarter not harder.