HEAD BLOG

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 The buzz, hype and excitement of a year ago has been replaced by reality.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.