E3 2010 in Review: Who 'Won' at E3?

I don't think there's any question that Nintendo has won the show this year. 3DS has captured the minds of gamers. It's not simply that it can play games in 3D, the quality of the graphics is impressive. Without knowing a price, or when it will be released, every gamer I know plans to get one at launch. If the system is available this holiday season, I will be preordering as soon as the option becomes available. Frankly, I don't believe it will be possible to get the system any other way. It will be 2006 all over again. It took months for the Wii's sales to drop off to the point where they could reliably be found on shelves. I firmly believe the 3DS will follow suit.

That said, I can't really agree with the general assessment that the Move is relegated to third place. Move and Kinect each have their own issues, but I find the Kinect's issues more troubling at present.

The Kinect is a remarkable piece of technology, and Microsoft should be given full credit for trying to innovate in the field of motion control. It's unfortunate that Microsoft, the software company as you say, isn't really doing anything innovative with this product. Yes, you can drive menus with your voice and your hands. This is pretty neat, but as reviewers have discovered, the voice commands aren't particularly sophisticated. The 360 makes no differentiation between two voices. The best I can say is that it's implemented well. It's implemented, perhaps, for the first time on a home console, but we've been able to execute Voice Commands on PC for over 15 years, there is no current evidence that 360 will offer much in the way of calibration or personalization. This is little better than a limited Voice Commands you can perform in some Nintendo DS titles. Controlling the menu system with your hand is a classy feature, but its implementation is really no different than that of a Wiimote. Yes, your hand is being tracked rather than an infrared beam, but similar things were done with the Eye Toy seven years ago on the PlayStation two.

Another troubling aspect is the line up of games. Microsoft has introduced its launch titles: solid, conservative applications reminiscent of many titles on the Wii. We have collections of sports games to look forward to. We have racing games. We have dancing games. We have virtual pet games. We have fitness games. In short, Microsoft's offerings offer a little something for the whole family, with the exception of the hardcore gaming enthusiast that has been their target audience and lifeline for all five years of the console's success. Where is Kinect Halo? Kinect Gears? Their advertising trailer clearly shows a guy firing imaginary rifle. Where is that game? In fact, why is it that in the full year of development time they've had since they first announced Project Natal, they've produced very little in the way of gaming experiences that are more intensive than their original technical demos. I find this troubling, not because I don't think games for the Kinect will get better. Certainly they will. What I find troubling is that they gave us no demonstration of any hard-core title implementation. Not even a teaser. Not even a, "you can expect this sometime in 2011." My gut reaction is that this isn't such a good thing. It makes me think they are having a lot more trouble implementing this kind of game than they would like to admit.

Even more troubling are the reports that Kinect is unable to read a person reliably (or possibly at all) if they are sitting down. Microsoft's response is that Kinect will provide a fun time for everyone, whether you are playing or watching, and that their system will encourage people to get on their feet. I don't know about you, but I don't do a lot of driving on my feet. When I want to fast forward a movie to my favorite moment, I don't want to have to stand up to do it. As of right now, the technology is unusable by someone who comes home from a hard day at work and just wants to sit on the couch and do a little gaming. It's unusable by a paraplegic who, despite having good arm strength, can't stand it all, and therefore, can't be accurately seen by the camera. Is unusable by someone with a more severe disability, such as muscular dystrophy, because Microsoft has is not offering controller support on their Kinect games. A person with limited mobility can't even attempt these games, can't challenge their friends to a competition, body versus controller. The motion gaming revolution is a step backward in inclusiveness, and the Kinect currently exemplifies this.

Will it improve? I trust it will. I don't know to what extent, or how quickly. I don't have much faith that Microsoft will compromise its vision for the disabled demographic, but I hope that at least they improve the quality of their motion gaming experiences for their core user base.

So what about the Move? People love to call it a Wiimote clone, and I can't really blame them. It is, essentially. Sony has done itself no favors over the years with their tendency to talk trash and later eat crow. They made fun of the Wiimote, then now they have their own peripheral with similar functionality. From the tech demos I've seen, the product Sony is offering is more sophisticated than its Nintendo cousin. It would seem to have greater precision. I can't vouch for the response. The author of this article seemed to find it lacking. I think it's important to consider, however, that Nintendo has had four years to improve their tracking and response: improvement that necessitated the release of an expansion module for the Wiimote in order to give it precision comparable to what the Move can do out of the box. The Move uses a camera for tracking, which means that theoretically, it could be implemented to track the human body just like the Kinect. The Wand provides precision in tracking and gives the user buttons to enhance game play. Ultimately, it is what it is: a Wii clone. Is this a bad thing? Is the Wiimote itself a bad idea? Sony has eaten its words. It can no longer pretend that the Wii was a silly concept. We can mock them for their hubris. We can mock them for spinning the dialogue to make themselves look like innovators (isn't that what all these companies do anyway?). The problem is, if you support the Wii as a piece of technology, dismissing the Move for offering a similar experience is a knee-jerk reaction that borders on the asinine. Either the technology is sound, or it isn't. This is what the gaming industry has always done: someone invents a controller, and then someone else copies that controller, making small changes. Over the course of multiple generations, the technology evolves as each iteration offers new improvements. This is not something to be discouraged.

What I think is most promising about Move, however, is Sony's lineup of games. Like Kinect, it offers a little of everything for the whole family, but unlike Kinect, they are also speaking directly to their core user base. Move exclusive games like Sorcery offer something more analogous to the gaming experience PlayStation users have come to expect. The ability to control magic and manipulate it in different ways isn't something that could be easily translated to a controller: not the way a hurdle race or raft jumping could be. In addition, offering the chance to play some of their most beloved franchises with the Move controller isn't ingenious: it's exactly what they should be doing. Sony wants its machine to be an indispensable part of your home entertainment system, but it understands, realistically, people that own the PlayStation 3 are hard-core gamers. If Microsoft wants Kinect to succeed, it can't afford to ignore its fan base.

Will Kinect prevail over Move? Probably. It has the newness factor, the wow factor. The 360's somewhat larger install base also works to its advantage. Whether it succeeds or not will depend largely on how quickly they can hammer out the bugs, and whether the mainstream audience has had its fill of motion gaming. Mainstream audiences simply may not see the need to have two gaming systems. Regardless, I think it's pretty unlikely that either Sony or Microsoft will be able to knock Nintendo off its throne at this point. The Wii was here first, and it's still the cheapest way to enter the home console market.

One last thing bears consideration. The PlayStation 3 has always been, for Sony, a wedge to drive the technology of their other electronics ventures. They did this successfully with Blu-Ray, a gamble that substantially inflated the initial costs of the system. Ultimately it cost them the console war, but they won the media war against HD-DVD. Now they are doing the same thing with 3D technology. Don't think they are naïve. Sony knows very well that 3D gaming is not going to sell PlayStation 3s. That's not their goal. Their goal is to sell 3D capable TVs and shutter glasses. Their goal is to get the consumer invested in 3D. Gaming is a fantastic tool to that end. Starting very soon the PS3's 35.7 million users will have a 3D ready game system in their homes: a game system that doubles as a 3D ready Blu-Ray player. The most difficult task of any technological innovation is to convince consumers to make the switch. This year, perhaps only a handful of extremely dedicated enthusiast will be willing to drop the money necessary for 3D home entertainment. By the holiday season, I wager we will see those TVs and glasses drop in price. I suspect we will see bundles that make this transition more affordable, and when that happens some of Sony's 36 million strong user base are going to look at that 3D-ready console, and their stack of games which, cleverly, contain the standard version and the 3D version on the same disc, and think "I bet Killzone 3 is even more awesome in 3D." That's exactly what Sony is aiming for.