Thoughts on the 3DS

I’m not going to bore you with the technical details. You can find those here and here.  I just wanted to get down some thoughts on what this means for the future of gaming:

Kinect Fails to Connect

Microsoft unveiled their Kinect (previously known as Project Natal) device on Sunday, a full day before the official launch of E3. No doubt this was done in an effort to set the stage for the announcement of their 2010-11 games that will use the technology.

Kinect — and Sony’s Move — are obviously golden ring grabs at the motion controlling frenzy Nintendo kick-started almost 5 years ago. Yes, it took Microsoft and Sony 5 years to finally swallow their pride (and disparaging comments) and admit that motion controllers did have a place in the gaming circuit.

I own all 3 major consoles, and play each equally (recently racking up time on Mass Effect, Ratchet and Clank, Fallout3, and Uncharted — can you tell I’m a father? My current games are at least 2 years old!); however, I spend a lot of time with the Wii and DS, mostly because I have a 6 year old who loves to play video games, and those are the consoles that constantly churn out quality, family-friendly (not kiddie!) games that we can all play — and, yes, a fair amount of shovelware that I have to dissuade my son from asking for (i.e. anything Scooby Doo, Spongebob, Ben10, and Nintendog clones).

Read more for my thoughts on Microsoft’s ability to foster the same feeling of trust and consistency in a new Blue Ocean market