Source: 1Up.com
Like a screaming child who’s come to the realization that he’s not getting his way, Sony’s now resorted to calling the DS names. That’s right, folks, Sony’s own Phil Harrison, VP of development, has now resorted to calling the DS “a gimmick”. Well, Phil, maybe it’s a gimmick, but if it is, it’s a gimmick that’s kicking your ass.
What amazes me about these interviews and these incredibly arrogant statements from the Sony camp of late (apparently Kutaragi’s head-in-ass syndrome is spreading) is that it never comes down to them doing anything wrong, making any mistakes, failing to meet the needs of the audience. No, with Sony it always comes down to the calling of names and assertions that the competition isn’t as good or now, that they’re defining feature is a “gimmick”.
This, of course, brings up some other questions.
For example, some might think that having MP3 playback or mini-movies on proprietary disks is a “Gimmick”. And they’d be right. One of the things that happens with every new generation of hardware is some kind of new angle, whether its technology or a feature that doesn’t necessarily need to be there for the gaming experience. In the previous generation it was DVD movie playback being built into the PS2 and Xbox. Did that enhance the gameplay experience? Not in the least. Nevertheless it became a defining gimmick for both PS2 and Xbox (though more so for PS2, as it released 2 years earlier), and people actually perceived it as being a feature missing from the Gamecube.
Perhaps you’ll remember the world-altering innovation of the “Emotion Engine”, which was supposed to give us “Toy Story-like graphics in real-time”. Or remember how it was so advanced that the Japanese
government wasn’t going to let it be exported? Remember how it was going to become a super-intelligent guidance system for high-end missiles? Of course, as it turned out, all these “innovations” and amazing features turned out to exist solely in the mind of Ken Kutaragi, who appears to be continuing his descent into senility and now taking poor Phil Harrison with him. Given the results of the “Emotion Engine” in the 6 years since it was introduced, I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s damn safe to call it a “Gimmick”.
In the end, certain features of practically every new gaming device (to say nothing of other products which suffer from the same malady) can -and should-be considered a Gimmick. For PSP, it’s playback of MP3′s and UMD’s is pure gimmick, through and through, and neither feature helps out gaming or improves/alters the gaming experience at all. Meanwhile the Nintendo DS’s dual screens have proven to be useful for helping developers create whole new kinds of gameplay experiences for some games and extending the kinds of experiences possible in others. The touch screen adds a new element of interactive possibility to games produced on the system (witness the just-released Nintendogs, a smart and innovative game that undoubtedly baffles Sony. It has something Sony tends to shy away from: uniqueness, to say nothing of fun).
Whatever else you can you can say about DS’s gimmicks, you can’t call its dual screens or touch screen gimmicks. These are options that affect, change and grow the possibilities of gameplay and the interaction between the player and the system.
Of course, Sony’s never been about innovation so much as repetition.
