gamasutra

Pre-E3: Study Claims Purchase Intent For PlayStation Move, Natal Below 10 Percent

Sony's PlayStation Move and Xbox 360's Project Natal motion control solutions have been garnering a lot of the spotlight from core gamers and the press, but a new study reflects currently low purchase intent for the new devices.

Research firm OTX's U.S. tracking study GamePlan Insights polled a group of 2,000 gamers between May 23 and June 5, 2010, and found that 8 percent of the Xbox 360 market intends to buy Natal, and 6 percent of the PlayStation 3 market intends to purchase Move.

Of the people that are already planning on buying Natal and Move, 25 percent plan to preorder the controllers.

The low purchase intent figures reflect the current lack of information about compatible games for the devices. Microsoft and Sony are expected to reveal more motion-compatible games at next week's E3 event in L.A., where the controllers will be a central attraction, after which purchase intent may rise.

Neither piece of hardware has officially launched (Natal still goes by its codename), and Microsoft in particular plans on backing the controller's release with a substantial marketing push.

The GamePlan Insights study also said that 15 percent of the Xbox 360 market is aware of Natal, while the same percentage of the PS3 market is aware of the Move.

The study showed that Natal intenders have an average age of 25, versus 28 for the Move. Also, 30 percent of Move intenders are female, compared to 20 percent for Natal.

Natal intenders are also closely aligned with core Xbox 360 game tastes, with four out of five saying they like to play shooting games.

"While we are still months away from launch, the current data suggests that Natal gamers are definitely Xbox 360 purists, while Move gamers have a stronger interest in other platforms," OTX said.

Move intenders' tastes are more varied across genres like action, role-playing and shooters, which rank closely together as the top three preferred genres, OTX said.

The study revealed the top five games that Natal and Move intenders are currently interested in, exhibiting the gaming tastes of these early adopters:

Titles with strongest overlap among Natal intenders:

1. Gears of War 3 – X360 (47%)
2. Fable III – X360 (42%)
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops – X360 (38%)
4. Halo: Reach – X360 (34%)
5. Dead Space 2 – X360 (26%)

Titles with strongest overlap among Move Intenders:

1. LittleBigPlanet 2 – PS3 (42%)
2. Gran Turismo 5 – PS3 (32%)
3. SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs – PS3 (30%)
4. The Legend of Zelda 2 – Wii (26%)
5. Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii (21%)

View graph of Move intenders' top preferred genres

View graph of Natal intenders' top preferred genres

DS Durability news

To make sure its portables could withstand an unexpected kiss with concrete, Nintendo waited until its final DS design was able to work consistently after being dropped ten times from a height of 1.5 meters, or around 4.9 feet (higher than an adult’s breast pocket), before putting the console into production.

Nintendo’s CEO and president Satoru Iwata explains:

“If a kid puts a game console in the basket of their bicycle, then has to make a sudden stop, the console can come flying out — and it’s not going to land on carpet.

So I told them to make it so it could survive being dropped from 1.5 meters onto concrete. The hardware design team screamed, but proceeded to figure out how to pass the test.”

The team dropped dozens of prototype DSes 100 times each, eventually choosing the design that took the most drops to break, according to Osamu Inoue’s recently published book Nintendo Magic. The company had a similar strategy with the Wii, testing the console until it could withstand an 80 kg weight (176 lbs.) for one minute.

And of course, if your DS finds a way to stop working, Nintendo’s customer service department has a reputation for going out of its way to make sure that replacing or repairing your system is as painless as possible.

Fuck yeah.

robio said:

The things my son has done to my DSi convinces me they have done some serious durability testing to it.  Granted it rarely gets dropped from more than about 2 1/2 to 3 feet but still it's taken A LOT of hits.

What about this?

The company had a similar strategy with the Wii, testing the console until it could withstand an 80 kg weight (176 lbs.) for one minute.

80kg is how much? Could I stand on this thing for a minute?

gamingeek said:

I just read this old Miyamoto quote

“The consensus [at Nintendo] was that power isn't everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles can't coexist. It's like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction.”

How awesome is Miyamoto's mind? Instead of thinking about numbers on a sheet the first thing he thinks about in sales terms, is ferocious dinosaurs fighting each other to extinction.

Can you imagine the conversations with Iwata. Miyamoto would make his hands into dinos and make little roaring sounds and Iwata would be like

Then Miyamoto would be like "It prints money" and Iwata is like

Dvader said:

Tonight GTTV has that monster E3 hour long show where they show 10 new games and crap. Killzone 3 will be one of them.

Archangel3371 said:

I would hope that the Wii HI-FI is at least on par with the 360 power-wise. Definitely like the sound of it being more online focused. It also needs a mass storage device and it should probably use a Blu-ray drive. I'm certainly onboard for it to come out in 2011. I imagine that they'll be smart enough so that it's fully backwards compatible and that everthing can be easily transferred over and the VC service continues and grows to accomodate larger game sizes. Oh yeah and it better have some kind of achievement system.

It should have the power of two 360s duct taped together.