FULL BODY CONTACT Kinect from Microsoft gets rid of the electronic game controller altogether by following the motions made by players.THE question can now be asked: Does it make sense to buy a Nintendo Wii anymore?
For four years, there has been no question. No product has been more important than the Wii in leading video games’ return to the cultural mainstream. Since its debut in 2006, the Wii has reshaped living room entertainment by making simple, intuitive games accessible to millions of people who never felt comfortable with a typical two-handed game controller covered with buttons and sticks.
For all their sophistication and power, the competing consoles — the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 — have remained largely the province of serious gamers. Neither brand offered the sorts of controls that could truly appeal to a mass audience, and particularly to families that want to have fun together at home.
Until now. Nintendo should feel some heat at the moment, because Microsoft and Sony, which outstrip Nintendo in sheer technical resources, have finally caught up with the Wii’s lead in engineering and its ingenious human interface. Put another way, for almost four years, the Wii offered a unique home entertainment experience. But now, after the introductions this fall of the Move system from Sony for the PS3 and the brilliant Kinect from Microsoft for the Xbox 360, the Wii no longer does anything important that the PS3 or Xbox 360 cannot do even better.
On the one hand (so to speak), the Move basically copies the Wii’s wandlike controller, although it feels slightly more accurate. As with the Wii, you wave the Move’s controller around and swing and twist it in space to bowl or throw or evoke some other action on the screen.
The difference is that the Wii’s graphics, while cute, are of low resolution and inferior detail. The PS3 is a high-definition powerhouse. When you compare golf on the Wii to golf on the PS3 with Move, you realize that there really is no competition. On the Wii, golf looks like a video game. On the PS3, golf looks like a golf course. I cannot wait to see how Sony incorporates the Move into its Major League Baseball series next year. Done properly, it should be as close to standing in the batter’s box and trying to hit a professional curveball as most of us will ever come.
Moreover, the PS3 plays Blu-ray movie discs and can display 3-D images, two things the Wii cannot do. And the PS3 has a full lineup of great traditional games if you want to pick up a real controller. So with the Move, Sony gets zero points for creativity but full marks for successful imitation.
Still, legitimate reasons to buy the Wii remain. Of course, there is price. The Wii costs $200 and now comes with both the Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort compilations. (A second controller costs around $40.) The PS3 with Move costs twice as much, $400, and comes with only one game compilation, called Sports Champions. A second Move controller costs around $50. The least expensive version of the PlayStation 3, which does not include Move, costs $300.
The other potential reason to buy the Wii is the games available on that system and nowhere else. If playing Mario, Donkey Kong or Zelda games is important to you or yours, the Wii is the only choice. If you must play Disney Epic Mickey, you need a Wii. (Likewise, if you must play Gran Turismo 5 or God of War III, you need a PS3.)
So you have Nintendo and Sony offering comparable controllers rigged to machines with far different technical power and with quite different prices.
Then you have what deserves, as far as I am concerned, to be the technology hit of the year: the Kinect from Microsoft. If you have not heard by now, Kinect takes the concept of the Wii (and the Move) and pursues it to its natural culmination, getting rid of the electronic game controller altogether. The Wii rescued gaming from being in a perpetual niche by introducing a controller that was simple to use. Kinect is driving gaming into the future by literally seeing and listening to you.
Want to highlight a menu item? Wave your hand or just say, “Xbox, play music,” for example. Want to kick a ball? Kick. Want to bowl? Swing your arm as though you are bowling. That’s it. As with any trailblazing new technology, the right question is, “Sounds good, but does it really work?” Kinect really works.
And it is obvious that Kinect is just in its infancy. There are a small number of (often compelling) Kinect games amid a sea of traditional, non-Kinect games. But what will happen when developers start incorporating Kinect features like voice recognition into their big-budget titles? I cannot wait to find out. Imagine an adventure game controlled by simply standing and turning and leaning and holding the game’s items on the screen. These things are not going to be easy, but I would be shocked if they do not happen over the next couple of years.
Without Kinect, the least expensive version of the Xbox 360 now costs $200, the same as the Wii. But without Kinect, the Xbox 360 is not competing with the Wii for the affection of mothers and children. With Kinect, the Xbox 360 costs $300 with four gigabytes of storage or $400 with a 250-gigabyte hard drive, which is primarily for those who will download a lot of movies or store a lot of music. Like the PS3, the Xbox 360 can display 3-D. (Very few games support it now, though, and you need a television capable of 3-D and special glasses.) And the Xbox Live Internet service is the class of the console gaming industry.
So the real threat to Nintendo and the Wii is not Sony, it is Microsoft and Kinect. Kinect is even easier to use than the Wii, and it brings your whole body into an electronic entertainment experience in a way that has never existed before.
Does it make sense to buy a Wii anymore? If price really matters or you just need your Nintendo fix, then sure. But there are more innovative and exciting options these days.
