15 May 2006

The game-console race

i'm not following the E3 news that closely
but there's some points that i haven't seen made

mainly that gesture recognition on the wii
will be as hard a problem as handwriting recognition

(in fact, the wii should innovate handwritten input)

because gestures have a pre-existing logic
that logic does not yet know

if you're tired
if you're hyper
if your body position changes

simple gestures become harder to distinguish

so expect a lot of frustration
as programmers/designers master this new domain

also
the whining about the ps3 price is a joke

people already forgot how they'd been making jokes
about buying a ps3 just for the cheap blu-ray drive

nextgen game machines can't possibly cost less to make
than top-of-the-line gaming pc's

and serious gamers will pay

but the real contest between xbox2 and ps3
will be their online experience

and sony is playing multiyear catchup there