Electronic Arts believes that Wii owners will be tempted to upgrade to a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 thanks to Move and Kinect. According to Euro publishing chief, Jens Uwe Intat, the Wii has opened up a new audience, and Sony is set to capitalize.
“We’ve always hoped Nintendo would get new audiences into gaming with the Wii, and they’ve successfully done that,” says Intat. “We also always hoped those people would later buy a next gen gaming machine that does stuff the Wii doesn’t do as well as the others and we can certainly expect that the combination of reducing the entry barrier of the price and making the PS3 and 360 more accessible via Move or Kinect, we will certainly get people who now enjoy playing video games and want to play online or enjoy games in a much high resolution. We do expect quite a few people to do this.”
I tend to disagree with Intat on this. With Move, I think the major appeal will be those who already own a PS3 and want to try something new. If anything, I’d say it’ll open up traditional gamers to waggle controls, rather than open up “casual” gamers to HD consoles. With Kinect, I think it’ll just appeal to anybody dumb enough to fall for Microsoft’s ten gazillion dollar marketing campaign.
I’ll confess there are a lot of Wii owners in that demographic.
Move can capture Wii audience, EA says [MCV]