My Take Radio

The suc­cess of the Microsoft Kinect and the Sony Move rests squarely on soft­ware. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about which one is bet­ter based on hard­ware specs but it is all going to come down to soft­ware. The best exam­ple of this is Gui­tar Hero (or Rock Band). I know Rich touched on this in his last show but I wanted to break it down a bit more.

With Gui­tar Hero, the pub­lic had to buy addi­tional hard­ware to play var­i­ous ver­sions of the game. The game itself was very well done, addic­tive and became a huge hit. Peo­ple were will­ing to pay for the addi­tional hard­ware because the game was so great, and they enjoyed the nov­elty of using phys­i­cal instru­ments as the game controller.

When you boil it all down, the Kinect and Move are exactly the same as Gui­tar Hero, but with­out the allur­ing tie in of the music game. Right now peo­ple are say­ing the Kinect is rev­o­lu­tion­ary and the Move is the Wii on steroids but if nei­ther has the soft­ware to cap­ti­vate gamers in the same way as Gui­tar Hero did, or the Wii, then both will only gar­ner mar­ginal success.

Which device will get the killer title first? What do you think?

Mar­cus Rivers is Sony’s new poster boy for the PSP. Mar­cus loves the PSP and wants to see it on top (or at least above the iPhone). The “Mar­cusPSP” ads are aimed at rais­ing aware­ness of PSP game qual­ity ver­sus the lack of for most iPhone games.

He raises some extremely valid points and even has nerve to show the iPhone in the above ad. The prob­lem is that peo­ple do not care about the truth. iPhone games are cheap and can be pur­chased from the phone itself vs. going to the store. I wish SOny the best of luck in this new aggres­sive cam­paign but the truth is that when it comes to the PSP, Mar­cus can­not save you.

After a leak from Game Informer mag­a­zine con­firmed a sequel for Lit­tle Big Planet it was only a mat­ter of time before a trailer was released. I am such a huge fan of LBP sim­ply because it’s inno­v­a­tive and actu­ally a very fun game to play. I actu­ally find it to be a great stress reliever. With out fur­ther adier here is Lit­tle Big Planet 2 cour­tesy of Game Trail­ers & 411Mania. Enjoy!

Apple with the iPod Touch,iPhone and upcom­ing iPad are putting a dent in the portable gam­ing mar­ket. Nin­tendo has always been the indus­try leader in regards to portable gam­ing with Sony a dis­tant sec­ond. Over the last few years Apple has slowly crept up on both com­pa­nies and is mak­ing a dent in their rev­enue stream. 

Apple increased their pres­ence by 14% in one year as seen in the chart above which is a com­bi­na­tion of NPD data as well as Flurry’s own data. Who’s los­ing their foot­ing? Sony is. The allure of cheap mini games and the increase in graph­ics power will only con­tinue to make Apple a viable com­peti­tor. With the con­tin­u­ing advance­ment of portable tech­nol­ogy will Apple unseat Sony and take the num­ber 2 spot or will Apple go after Nin­tendo and go for the kill? Com­ment below

View the full arti­cle at Mash­able via Apple Insider

Over the last few months, Sony has imple­mented a new mar­ket­ing strat­egy using smarmy and con­de­cend­ing VP Ken But­ler to tout the virtues of the PS3. Playsta­tion does movies, music, games, pho­tos and after this Tuesday’s release of God Of War 3, they now offer ven­gence. How can you not buy this sys­tem? Sony’s new mar­ket­ing strat­egy also involves find­ing the tough­est guy in the yard and punch­ing them in the face to show they mean busi­ness. The newest com­mer­cial walks right up to Nin­tendo and pretty much up and punches them square in the face. It pokes fun at the Wii con­trol style while show­ing the con­sumer how inno­v­a­tive and intu­itive the new PS Move is.

I like Sony’s mar­ket­ing strat­egy in this par­tic­u­lar instance sim­ply because I am a fan of sar­casm and above all, I can appre­ci­ate a well placed jab at the com­peti­ton. After view­ing this com­mer­cial are you more inclined to buy the PS Move? Time to see how Nin­tendo responds. Odds are Nin­tendo will ignore the ads and let sales do the talk­ing. 2010’s Hol­i­day Sea­son will be very inter­est­ing to say the least.

Com­mer­cial Credit: Ars Tech­nica & Kotaku