Issue 122 | The Hound: The E3 2006 Preview - Nintendo vs Sony

E3 is always a bit of a pain in the arse if I'm honest. All the biggest games companies in the world (and quite a lot of the smaller ones) all jump onto various planes for LA and set up massive, large, medium size and teeny-weeny stalls in the gigantic LA Convention Centre. Carnage ensues as a lot of very socially inept, ill-mannered, over-worked, under-paid journalist types swamp the floors in an attempt to see just about everything on display. After a couple of days the show packs up, everyone gets on a plane home and the industry breaths a sigh of relief and starts planning for the next year.

The biggest issue this year is the competition for headlines between Sony and Nintendo. The PS3 and the Wii are two very different consoles, one is going for all out functionality, it is powerful, it is impressive, it is the very definition of the modern home media centre. Nintendo's Wii is, first up, called Wii, second controlled by an innovative motion sensing remote control and thirdly nothing like anything we have seen before; ever. Some people argue that you are now getting 'two gaming industries'; these people are idiots who should be banished to Chav ridden streets of Gillingham forevermore.

Are you suggesting that because films like Ocean's Twelve (one of the worst films of all time packed full of big stars and unbelievably bad dialogue/hideous scripting/rubbish) and Brokeback Mountain (a critically acclaimed creative masterpiece featuring homosexual cowboy fun) both exist in the movie world that there are suddenly 'two movie industries'; obviously the answer is no. Nintendo and Sony will still be competing for the same shelf space, the same consumers and the same column space in their attempts to gain industry superiority. To my mind they are both still competing out of the same shoebox of an industry, for the same core customers, then they both branch out to look to appeal to different types of people in various distinctive demographics.

Sony are after the man of the house (or the twenty something guy living on his own) who wants to own a really cool piece of shiny silver technology that plays great games, offers movies and music, Internet out the box and all sorts of other clever tricks. Nintendo are aiming for kids who like dance mats, old people who like Scrabble and everyone else in between who can't work out how to use a game controller.

The ideological battle between the two companies is fascinating. Nintendo ferverously believe that the industry is diving head first into a dead-end, where increased graphical power and lack of innovation will lead to stagnation, Sony believe that by creating a hybrid machine that is the hub of your home entertainment needs, they will be able to sell a PS3 as an 'essential lifestyle purchase'. The Wii is more about fun. Much like the DS and the PSP, the polarisation of the two consoles couldn't be starker. The Nintendo DS has proven to be a massive success, backed up by a string of critically acclaimed titles that have also gone on to sell in record breaking numbers, Nintendo's machine is rewriting the book on what a successful contemporary games console should be. The Wii is made in a similar mould, but with one key difference: it is a home console.

On the move the DS is a revelation, it offers a lot of quick, innovative, fun, pick-up-and-play titles that you can enjoy for twenty minutes and then pack away. The home console and handheld gaming experiences have always been hugely different. Arguably, when at home people are more willing to be engaged in a title, they want better graphics, bigger sound, greater spectacle and generally a more awe-inspiring experience. Arguably, the PS3 offers this and the Wii doesn't. Arguably, but fatally wrong.

E3 is a show all about spectacle, and nothing says 'Look at me!' like a huge screen showing a game with eye-bleedingly good graphics. But what about something new, something exciting and something that looks like my Sony DVD Remote painted with white gloss paint? The Nintendo Wii is just the sort of thing that will win E3 for Nintendo, not because of big graphics and big spectacle, but because of sheer innovation and freshness of ideas.

So, at E3 this year power will come up against innovation. When Sony and Nintendo speak, the industry sits up and listens, but more than ever they are singing a totally different tune. The floors of E3 house some of the harshest critics in the gaming world, but the acid test will come when the PS3 and the Wii go head to head on the consumer market. E3 will see Nintendo and Sony having to sell their products to journalists and industry suits, but that's the easy party. For Sony, and even more so Nintendo, selling their new hardware innovations to the world outside E3 will prove to be the biggest challenge they have ever faced. The stakes couldn't be higher.

Hound: "One Man and his dog went to a meadow, the dog got bored, ran back home and became a journo."

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