Years ago when Nintendo announced they were going to be releasing a new console I was very fucking thrilled. Why not? The consoles that introduced me to video games and played a major part in how I developed as child were all made by Nintendo. So many memories and all of them good. No other corporation could claim nearly such lofty status. Then I heard it would be called The Wii or wee. I sort of chuckled it off like most fan boys with the inescapable "I'm gonna play with my Wii so Hard. BAhahahahah!" Then I heard about the controller and saw videos of people waving them about like fucking magic wands. Still I could not think an ill thought of my beloved Nintendo. Finally it was released and I had a chance to play it for the first time at a buddies house. We played Wii Sports (as if anyone played any other Wii games that first few months). Started with golf and then bowling and went on playing each one after the other. My first thoughts were "This is great" and 'Wow, motion controls are the shit.' But after a short time I realized that something very bad was actually occurring here. By the time we got to boxing I had come to the conclusion that Nintendo may have just halted a two and a half decades of innovation and forward momentum in gaming and made the console equivalent of a family board game. There I was in the living room of a small white family who had never owned a gaming system, whose kids were fit and played sports, the average american family you might say, and they were all eating the shit up. The mainstream was coming and with it the homogenization (further homogenization in some peoples minds) of the video game industry.
Fast forward to this year and both Xbox (my new goto console) and Playstation announce their own version of "motion controllers" for "casual gamers", Kinetic and Move respectively. Fuck. After the Wii tragedy I dismissed Nintendo (ecxept for one or two remakes that sucked and The DS) saying "Let them make games for the average mouth breathing idiots (and kids) I have my Xbox to do some serious and mature gaming. However, now I get that same feeling from the living room. The coming storm. But now it's coming for ALL gamers and ALL consoles. (PC gamers shut your nerd mouths)
Okay, do I think Kinetic and Move are goin to murder Xbox and PlayStation like the Wii murdered Nintendo? No. What I fear is they are goin to be successful because of thier appeal (mouth breathers) and that in turn the game industry will start to focus more attention on making lots of causual games and leaving the serious game makers with a smaller share of both the market and the budgets. Then the only games that will be made for adults will be shitty frat boy games (Call Of Duty 8: Modern War Of 1812?) and idiot proof Japanese style games (Final Fantasy 22: Press a for 60 hours while techno plays and you win.)
Anyway here's hoping Kinetic and Move fail and games are left to us unattractive socially awkward types with very dexterous fingers.
(Hear that ladies? Dexterous fingers.)
