Copy That...

First of all, apologies for the lack of activity recently; without regaling eager gamer-readers with the intricacies of my personal life, it’s been hectic.

It seems I’m not the only one who’s been busy though, nor the only one in need of making an apology.

It seems that Sony fans everywhere should be extending the olive branches right now – Playstation Move, the new motion controller from Sony, is a real Wii-too effort.

Nintendo fans everywhere are – quite fairly – lording it over their Sony counterparts, partly from the smug realisation that their downtrodden Ninty had fought back to literally and metaphorically lead the pack, in sales and ideas, partly out of anger from being so blatantly copied. Should Sony find runaway success with Move, Nintendo might well feel a little hard-done by.

The games industry, though, is above such petty squabbles. The fact is that Nintendo’s move towards motion has just taken one step closer to being the gaming standard. Will traditional button-based pads remain come PS4? Probably, but for the foreseeable future, if you aren’t up for arm-waving, you’ll be waiving your chance to play some key titles. Rumours of a motion-based Uncharted 3, a waggle-infused Heavy Rain add-on and even some sort of integration into the ever-delayed Gran Turismo 5 are flying around almost as readily as limbs in a sports-based set of mini-games, one of which has already been announced as a launch title for Sony’s wagglesticks (wonder where they got that idea, too?).

Gamers need to be ready to embrace motion, because it’s where the games industry wants to go next. Even Microsoft’s ‘big new idea’, Natal, is based on the idea of limb-flailery in the extreme. It may use a sophisticated camera to track your movements rather than any sort of controller, but the end result is the same – jumping about to kill, explore, score and kill again. All the usual gaming objectives can be accomplished.

The thing is, many gamers aren’t ready. For every gamer out there who wants to literally punch the air to make a kill or hit a home run, there is at least one who wants to stab X, eat crisps and gawk at the telly from the comfort of their sofa. If the ratio is even 1:1, that creates a dangerous split in the demographics. Yes, for now, Sony will still serve up great button-based titles – but what if Move doubles PS3 sales? Roughly speaking, that would mean that roughly half are still traditional gamers – but you can bet that motion would be crowbarred into every title, regardless of the large contingent who aren’t interested.

This is the real issue. It seems that no one actually wants to serve the traditional gamer any more. Why spend a hundred million pounds making a GTA V when you can knock up a motion mini-game collection for 3% of the development cost but 50% of the revenue?

The Xbox 360 and PS3 have so far amassed sales of 71 million consoles, combined, since the beginning of this generation without any kind of motion controller being available on either system. Never mind that this is actually more than Wii’s 69 million, but it’s pretty clear that the traditional gamer is still a market worth paying attention to.

Sony might find some success by mimicking Nintendo’s little white box, and Microsoft with their quirkier new camera, and I wish them luck, but they would do well not to Move too far from those gamers that bought ten million copies of Modern Warfare 2. Hopefully losing standard game-pads forever will be one motion gamers won’t carry.

Have handhelds had it?

Gaming on the go is big business. Nintendo have sold over 120 million DS consoles, and Sony have shifted a not-too-shabby 60 million PSPs. This is the largest number of handhelds that have ever been sold in a single five-year period. Clearly, setting lap times on the loo is here to stay.

But whether it’s going to remain in its current form is another matter entirely. Over the coming years, the handheld market is going to see a huge period of change, the likes of which could see even the mighty Nintendo ousted from their multi-billion dollar market-leading position.

The cause of this looming upset is undoubtedly the Nokia N-gage.


No, really. This may sound ludicrous, but the success of Apple’s iPhone, with its App store full to bursting with cheap, accessible games, can be traced back to Nokia’s failed handheld-meets-mobile.


Nokia’s doomed device was the first real stab at a games/phone combo, and although it failed spectacularly, it set a trend that was to have far-reaching consequences for the handheld games industry. The beauty of a gadget that can just as easily call your gran as it can zap alien scum is that it can be bought very easily. Want a DS? That’ll run you £100. A PSP? £130. Don’t even mention the PSP Go’s absurd price tag. But an Apple iPhone, or a similarly powerful smart phone?

 Certainly. Just sign on the dotted line, sir.

Monthly phone contracts may be expensive in the long run, but they allow adults with a regular income (so, anyone who isn’t a starving freelancer like myself) to walk into a phone shop tomorrow and pick up a snazzy new gadget. A gadget, like an iPhone or any one of a number of similar superphones, that will download and play cheap, accessible games on the go. No lining up in funny-smelling game shops, no wrestling with an overweight brat for the last copy of Halo Theft Turismo 7. Just hit ‘download’ and play until the train arrives.

Now, Sony have tried something similar. The PSP Go is a download-only console, which should pack the same kind of advantages as Apple’s efforts. But it became a flawed device, destined for failure the moment Sony decided not to also make it a phone as well – even a bad one.

PSP Go can’t be bought for £0 up front on a contract (a staggering £250 up-front, actually), it can’t go online anywhere – so no downloading Tetris while you wait in traffic – and the thing simply won’t go everywhere you do, because it isn’t a phone – it isn’t an essential.

The iPhone’s App store may be teeming with rubbishy tat titles, it may be devoid of most traditional big-hitters – think Call of Duty, Halo, GTA – but it’s cheap, and it’s easy. Whilst most seasoned gamers may well stick to their pricey, inconvenient consoles with their tiny selection of downloadable titles (that goes for DSi and PSP Go), the general public – the mass market – will buy titles on their phones and play cheap and cheerfully on the go. This emerging demographic will soon be much bigger than the traditional handheld market – which isn’t exactly something to be sniffed at as it is.

Backing this up, mobile phone development last year shot up – to 25% of overall games development, from 12% the previous year. Worryingly for Nintendo and Sony, that’s more than twice the support that DS or PSP receive (Source: Game Developer Research: Game Development Survery 2009-2010)

Time, then, for the traditional handheld companies to adapt, or be left behind – at home, or worse, on store shelves. Portable gaming needs to be mobile, too.

Why Nintendo's Next Console isn't DS2

Rumours. You have to love ‘em. From Rockstar’s gentle teasing in GTA game manuals to the dark-room-dwelling crackpots who spew spurious nonsense because they know someone who knew a guy who passed Microsoft's headquarters once, the games industry is built as much on rumours as it is on actual announcements.

Which is why the recent 'New Nintendo Platform' leak is such big news. Yes, it may well be a load of tosh perpetrated by bored geeks, but - as is so often the case in an industry brimming with speculation and quieted whispers - we might just be on to something here.

DS2 is most people's first guess. It's not a bad one either. The original handheld released in 2005, making this its fifth year, and the thing's already seen three iterations - four if you count the DSi on steroids that is the XL. In normal videogame tradition, this means that the game is nearly up for the creaky old handheld, especially if the rumblings of a Sony PSP2 are to be believed. Nintendo don't want to kill DS sales, which are still absurdly strong, but they don't want to be left behind, either. And then there’s Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Falling by the technological wayside is really the main issue. Nintendo aren't going for graphical clout this generation, as we all know. But a DS would surely be shamed by a PSP2, especially if the latter throws in a touch screen and motion sensors for good measure. And the iPhone is already cutting sharply into Nintendo’s target demographic.

But Nintendo will release a Wii HD instead, except with a catchier title. Why? Well, the Wii is in a similar predicament. Increasingly ignored by third-party devs at a time when HDTV adoption is skyrocketing, the little white box is starting to show its age. Nintendo won't want to stilt Wii sales but they won't want Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's resurgent PS3 to steal its thunder, either. In fact, when Xbox 360 gets its controller-free camera, Natal, and PS3 gets Wiimote-alikes this year in the form of its new ‘Arc’ controllers, the Wii will face its sternest test yet.

Going HD would go some way to drawing the three systems onto a level playing field once Wii loses its greatest advantage - its novel controller. Iwata recently hinted that HD alone wouldn't be enough for the Wii's successor, which is why there'll almost certainly be more to it than that. An HD Wii, with Motion Plus built into controllers and another new way to play - be it a Natal-esque camera, or some crazy new idea? It'd maintain Nintendo's advantage at a critical time, stop Microsoft or Sony from making Wii feel outdated, and draw third parties back to the console.

As for the DS? Well, that's simple. DS2 is already here - it's called DSi. Nintendo's newest dual-screen has four times the memory of the DS, for example, and twice the processing power. Nintendo have even promised DSi-enhanced and DSi-exclusive titles at some point down the line. The recent announced of Pokemon 5, the next true sequel to Diamond/Pearl, could fit the bill perfectly. With the hidden technical improvements of the DSi, there's simply no need for a new DS altogether when so many people are walking around with a more powerful DS in their pockets already.

Imagine this at this year’s E3: new, exclusive DSi titles announced to seamlessly transition the DS to a new generation without stifling DS sales - whilst remaining fully backwards compatible - and a Wii HD to keep the home console fighting in the face of fresh competition. This very much could be where Nintendo goes from here.

But for now, keep it quiet. I might just be a babbling crackpot, you know.

-- Alex Evans, February 6^th 2010