There’s an interesting snippet of an article over at Gamasutra about the Wii and X-Box 360. It’s an interview with the Director of Product Management for the XBox 360 and Live, where he posits a couple of things:
- Wii users as casual gamers might want to upgrade to the XBox
- A lot of Wii users break it out as a party game
- There’s no need for a Wii2, because casual gamers don’t care about horsepower
They’re interesting points that I mostly agree with. I’m actually one of those gamers that bought a Wii first because it was a “novelty” as he says. Thing about the novelty of it is, for the games that really make use of the Wii controller, they are still fun to go back and play again because of the visceral nature of the experience.
I wasn’t really interested in a next-generation game console for a long time because, as I get older, I find I have less interest in shooters and scrolling games that are just a bunch of button-mashing. What finally made me buy a 360 was Rock Band. Again, it was the visceral nature of the experience that made me break out the bucks. And Rock Band is still the main game I play on the console. As far as the party game aspect, well, I think the more visceral and physical an experience is, the more it becomes the kind of experience that is better shared. Sports, dancing, playing music, even sex, human social experiences tend to be not so much intellectual as physical.
I’m not so sure I agree about the Wii2. And I’m not so sure I think that Microsoft agrees either, as I’ve heard rumors on the net of a Microsoft Wii-like controller. I’ve had my moments with the Wii where I realize the movement tracking isn’t quite what it should be, and that I could really play the game by flicking my wrist. Hopefully, if we do get a Wii2 or XBox motion controller, it will be more sensitive and allow players to use more and subtler adjustments of motion to play games. (Be a bitch to program for, I’d imagine.) Of course, that almost has to make the games more hardcore, so maybe they’re right….
GapPage 