There’s no denying that the Nintendo Wii’s motion sensing remote control has turned the games industry on its head, giving what was formerly a pretty exclusive pastime an entirely new level of accessibility. Pah, says Peter Molyneux, that is going to be surpassed by Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE efforts in the long-term.

In an interview with Spanish language site CanalJuegos, Molyneux commented “All I can say is that Microsoft is an incredibly smart company and I never fail to be impressed by just how clever they are. Don’t forget this is the company which pioneered LIVE which I believe will ultimately be far more impactful on video games in the long term than something like the Wii controller.”

It’s easy to point out the bias here – Molyneux runs Lionhead Studios, which is now owned by Microsoft. Ergo, he’s in Microsoft’s pocket and it does him favours to say these nice things about the company. On the other hand, he could be proved right; LIVE has really changed the face of console gaming, not by introducing new types of players, but by significantly enhancing what can be achieved and what is expected from a home console. And while rivals like Sony can only really try to play catch up, Microsoft is still pushing ahead, introducing new services like video marketplace downloads, console-PC interoperability, cross-platform gaming, etc.

I actually don’t think it’s possible to compare the LIVE with the Wii remote – they’re just too different. While the Xbox is successfully using gaming to take over the living room, the Wii is doing more to put the consoles in there in the first place. Now if only there was a Wii-360 hybrid, it’s dominance of your entertainment space would be unparalleled…

Via Games Digest

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 1:15 pm by Al W
Misc news.