Interestingly enough he calls the downfall of Nintendo sales I mentioned earlier a direct result from Nintendo not releasing its bigger titles in the first half of 2009. And the only influence the recession has on the video gaming sales is through the distributors.

Yoichi Wada is quoted to say the following:

Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function,

He does expect Nintendo to also move this way with its new console in 2011, contrary to the Activision Blizzard CEO’s statement who does not believe we will see new consoles within 2 years. I personally believe the new Xbox controller; Natal, will be the next step towards a full motion gaming environment, the last step was made by the Wii’s controller and it remains to be seen what the next step will be. We haven’t seen what the Natal will be able to do in a fully developed game!

From the first MUD Shadow of Yserbius to the 12 million subscriptions World of Warcraft has today, the MMO market on the PC represents almost the entire growth of the PC as a gaming platform. The MMO’s competed with everything available on PC’s at that time and Alexander tells us it is going to do exactly the same for the console.

There are a few problems with their plans; one of them being the difficulty of developing on the PS3, opposed to developing for the Xbox360, so Alexander says developers should develop for the PS3 and then port  to the Xbox360, which is suppossed to be a lot easier! He publishes a great list of problems on his slides, which you’ll find in the gallery below. But the other would be the following: For the PC, you would only pay a monthly fee to play the game, for the Xbox you would pay a fee for Xbox Live and then also for the game. Casual player will say it’s too expensive, while hardcore players will have a PC game for sure.

I’m convinced consoles will remain a big part of gaming, but the MMO market will probably stay best, played at the PC with a full keyboard and all its options.

With a total amount sold of 227,400 during August, down 39 per cent year-on-year Nintendo has to make a move to be able to profit from the coming holiday season. Microsoft is looking to present the Natal project while Sony is presenting their new controller in 2010, nobody knows what Nintendo will do to keep up.

But since Sony and Microsoft have been playing catchup since the launch of the Wii, it’s to be expected for Nintendo to have some trick up its sleeve. But I’m still trying to imagine how do can out-do Natal.