So, what does Natal say about XBox? I'd just like to know that the same standards are being applied.
It doesn't make sense to me to say Sony is confusing folks because they are following Wii with Move when MS is doing...the SAME thing with Natal.
Why is Sony described as "confused" for chasing the Wii's casual audience, when MS does the same thing?
Why was the press obsessed with Sony's motion controller name, and whether it was "exciting", but they've never asked MS to give us something other than the dev name?
I mean, come on, even the straw man in the article seems a bit out of bounds. Seriously, someone walks into a game store and we should believe they wouldn't be able to work out that the PS3 plays games? In my opinion, this so-called "identity crisis" is as much a factor of the (mostly western) press reaction as anything else. No, it doesn't matter that I'm a gamer. I was never confused about what I was buying. The people who I've recommended a PS3 to knew what they were getting (and so did the folks I recommended get a Wii or 360, BTW), a game machine that played the kind of games they wanted.
Where is the review of the XBox history? That machine seems a bit confused right now, as well. One example: they seem to have changed from "10 years is WAY too long for a console lifespan" to "well, you know, we think the XBox 360 will be around until 2015". THAT'S a reversal that has gone completely unnoticed by the western press. They have bought into Sony's lifespan plan. In fact, you can find Nintendo saying similar things about the lifespan of the Wii. Why isn't this as noteworthy as a retrospective of the PS3's marketing, and not the FIRST one at that, mind you? Just 2 years after the fact, XBox has been allowed to live down a 30% defect rate that bordered on fraud. But Sony is just CRAZY because 6 years ago they had a weird add. You see why that might seem a bit off-putting?
You see, it's news if it's new. We already know the early marketing was filled with hubris and silliness. That's not news. We also know ALL consoles are putting out motion controls, which in a regular world running on human logic means that none of them are confused about being gaming consoles that have motion controllers.
Why it's news for Sony, and apparently bad news from the tone of the write up, well, I guess that's wisdom for the US gaming press to create and deliver.