Does Nintendos radical new strategy represent the future of gaming?
IF TALK of synergistic processing elements, parallel floating-point shader pipelines, vector units and 1080p high-definition video sets your pulse racing, you are probably looking forward to the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3), Sony’s new video-game console, which goes on sale in Japan and America next month. Most people find such technical trivia baffling, however. As a result, the video-games industry’s relentless pursuit of ever more computing power and graphical detail might ultimately prove counterproductive. That is the view of Satoru Iwata (pictured), the president of Nintendo, the Japanese company that dominated video-gaming in the 1980s before being deposed by Sony. Its new console, called the Wii, is also launched next month. But it is a very different beast from the PS3, inspired by a radically different strategy. Video gaming is a cyclical industry in which new consoles are launched every five or six years. In the last cycle, which began in 2000, Sony’s PlayStation 2 emer
