I’m not a huge CNN fan but Chris Morris does offer an evenhanded approach to reporting on the video game industry typically focusing on business and marketing matters as opposed to baiting fanboys with empty rhetoric. Anyways, he recently posted an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s Miyamoto: We’re happy with the road we’re taking, that, while not revealing technical details about the next generation, continued to reinforce Nintendo’s message that it is about games, not hardware. The most revealing statement for me:

“The Revolution will use cutting edge technology, but it’s ultimately about how that technology is used. We asked ourselves ‘why would a family need or want to have a gaming console?’ The answer is what’s driving development of the Revolution.”

This is precisely the question that I feel Sony and, to a lesser degree, Microsoft have been missing: why do I want a gaming console? My answer is simple, to play games. The fact of the matter is that I, as do many other people, already own dedicated devices to satisfy convergence needs; I own a DVR, a DVD player, and a dedicated means for displaying content from my PC on my TV as well as audio playback on my stereo. Those rudimentary features in the Xbox for audio and DVD playback never got used, my feeling was that they were extras that could have been trimmed out and looking forward to the PS3 and Xbox 360 it looks like both companies are continuing to move farther from their gaming roots.

The E3 this year left me a little less optimistic about the overall direction of the industry. While the business has certainly matured it seems that with that some innocence and wonder was shed along the way. Just look at the current franchise and genre glut, how many iterations of WWII can there be both in FPS and RTS style? Ignoring setting, how many FPS games can the industry support? Is running and gunning the only form of game play that sells? Do people ever get tired of endless twitching? Yes, I do recognize that there are some stellar franchises out there but personally, like Miyamoto, I want innovation. Novelty is what brought me into gaming and while it feels like it is diminishing it is novelty that keeps me gaming.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 10:26 am and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.