Are You A Marvel Or A DC?

Admittedly, conundrum might be an odd word to describe this situation but stick with me here. I bring up this situation as we as a society dominated by pop culture enter a time where our favorite comic properties, games, and books are being optioned into big Hollywood blockbusters. And lets be honest, there's only one entity that is managing to pull this off successfully while raking in buckets of cash at the same time; that being Marvel Studios. This Hollywood juggernaut went from being a fledgling studio banking its hopes and dreams on a big screen adaption of Iron Man in 2008 to a studio powerhouse with a multi-threaded universe that has thus far grossed over $7 billion dollars at the box office. And the most impressive feat here is that they've done this all without even owning the movie rights to the most popular characters on their comic book roster as the X-Men rights are tied up with Fox while the rights to Spider-Man belong to Sony. 

You're probably wondering where DC stands in all of this. Well, DC has been partnered with Warner Bros for years and we have seen many DC related movies in recent years; from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy to Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel. DC is cranking out movies just as much as Marvel is, but they haven't quite gotten the same kind of buzz. What makes it odd is that it's not for lack of trying and it certainly isn't because of the stable of characters DC has access to. DC being partnered with WB means that the full roster of characters is available to them. What seems to have happened is that the only properties that seem viable to them are Batman and Superman. You might say sure, there was that failed Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds and I would be likely to agree if it weren't for the fact that it was just outright a terrible movie.

And therein lays the difference between the two approaches to this scenario. Marvel from the get go had a singular vision for this on screen universe they wanted to build. Each movie was a bigger gamble than the last. As mentioned above, Marvel's two heavy hitter properties aren't even theirs to use on film. This forced them to create a strategy of elevating what were essentially B-list characters into the spotlight; characters that were known but not exactly popular. Characters that actually have some fairly convoluted origin stories but people bought in wholeheartedly. And to this day it continues to be a gamble because any one movie could derail this whole thing as each film is threaded together. The gamble however is paying dividends so far as Marvel has managed to elevate characters like Ant-Man, The Vision, and the Guardians into the mainstream. It's worked out to the point that Sony's failings with the Spider-Man property led to a partnership with Marvel, landing one of their most profitable and recognizable characters appearing in this year's Captain America: Civil War.

Should Nintendo Be Worried?

If you've been keeping up with news lately and you're in tune with gaming financial reports then you know that at the moment Nintendo isn't doing too well this year. Yes this is the same Nintendo that just a few short years ago we were all joking about saying that the Wii and DS were basically printing money for them. And to be fair Nintendo was riding quite high on the success of both machines. The Wii made motion control in gaming a hot commodity and opened up gaming to a lot of people who otherwise would not have been interested in it. Meanwhile the DS was still performing quite well, basically making up a majority of the handheld gaming market as Sony's PSP could just never find a foothold.

Gamers still love you, Link.

Nintendo has always faced certain challenges though. While their in house, first party developed titles are always big sellers(Mario, the Legend of Zelda, etc.); they never really have the support they need from third party developers. The Wii was no different. This is why the system has seen ports of major titles only rarely. When these ports do show up on the system they are vastly inferior to their 360/PS3 counterparts. With Sony and Microsoft now bridging the motion gaming gap with the Move and Kinect respectively, Nintendo no longer had the motion gaming gimmick as their stand out feature. When you take that away, you're left with a less than stellar gaming library mostly made up of shovel ware and ill received ports of popular games. 

Naturally Nintendo combats their competition through innovation. This year saw the release of their 3-D capable handheld, the 3DS, along with the announcement of their next console, the Wii-U. Normally Nintendo banks on the sales of their handhelds and for good reason. Usually new iterations of the DS fly right off the shelves but sales of the 3DS have been lagging. With the rise of gaming on smartphones, Nintendo is actually facing competition from an unlikely source. Quite frankly it's more conventional to have your little time wasters and mobile gaming in an all in one device rather than a dedicated handheld. And so iOS and Android devices are now cutting into Nintendo's mobile gaming market share.

It's That Time Of The Year Again!

This year's E3 is very quickly taking shape and it's starting to get pretty damn huge. Information seems to be getting released at a breakneck pace, I can barely keep up with it honestly. And that pace is only going to get faster as the days lead up to the actual event. For now I at least want to preview some of the big things we can expect to see covered when the big three step out onto their respective stages for their annual press conferences.

Nintendo

Right off the bat we know Nintendo is quite possibly going to have the most interesting conference of the year. Normally I never look forward to a Nintendo conference because they have a certain formula to them and an odd pacing. For years Nintendo used to trot out a representative who would go over various facts and figures displaying how their business has grown over the last year. For a while it was basically Nintendo boasting about how much money their handheld division was printing for them with the Gamecube's less than stellar performance. The Wii seemingly turned things around and made Nintendo's conferences just a little more exciting. But here we are five years down the road from the Wii's release; sales have slowed but the recently released 3DS is more than likely picking up the slack despite some of the sales not living up to expectations.

Motion Gaming - Wave of the Future or Passing Fad

In 2006 Nintendo released the Wii to the masses and with it came the age of motion gaming. The battle of the next generation systems had officially begun with Microsoft and Sony battling it out for high definition supremacy. Meanwhile Nintendo decided to go a different route and introduced the Wii, providing a completely different gaming experience. No longer were you limited to just sitting with a controller in hand but the game called for you to be active and interact with it on a whole new level. This was obviously good for Nintendo as the system went on to sell millions of units despite the fact that it wasn't on par with the graphical powerhouses in the X-Box 360 and PS3.

Fast forward to 2010 where Nintendo's Wii has maintained a growing share. While sales have slowed the Wii is still doing well. And now it finally has competition in the motion gaming arena as Sony and Microsoft's motion technology has hit the market. While Sony went the similar route by introducing a wand controller with sensors that are picked up by it's sensor camera, Microsoft went in an entirely different direction. With the Kinect, they have released a camera sensor that picks up on body movement as well as a user's voice. This eliminates the use of a wand or remote and makes you the controller. Finally each system is working on level ground and the real competition can begin.

But really what competition is there left to have? Motion gaming has split gamers into camps: casuals and "hard cores". Hard core gamers have never really been swayed by the allure of the motion control. At the same time motion control itself has brought new exposure to the industry and has made gamers out of people who normally never would have touched a console. In a way it has become a double edged sword in that it has brought new exposure to this growing business but hardcore gamers feel it detracts from the gaming experiences that they are used to. Thus far the biggest problem Nintendo has faced is that it cannot combine the two audiences. Not to mention that they have yet to produce truly unique titles that require motion gaming outside of Wii Sports. 

Microsoft's Kinect

I can't help but wonder if Sony and Microsoft have entered a state of gaming that is slowly dying off. The Wii has done tremendous business since it was released in 2006 but it hasn't exactly been burning up the charts like it used to. Tried and true titles still sell just as well if not better than heavily marketed titles that involve motion control. Again I draw my comparison between regular titles and the Wii titles as the Move and Kinect were only recently released. While both Sony and Microsoft have seen good sales from this, I'm not sure how long that will continue. Technically we have until E3 2011 when they really break out the new titles they have been building with motion control technology  but what haven't we seen done on the Wii that Sony and Microsoft can do better? And like the Wii, how long will it be until we see bargain bin mini-game titles released in droves? If they truly want to these peripherals to succeed they have to show gamers, casual and hardcore alike that motion gaming can appeal to broad audiences as well as niche gamers. They need to show that this tech is here to stay instead of another trend that will slowly die a miserable death on store shelves.