Sony's motion controller and Microsoft's Project Natal have made a lot of waves since they were first announced. Still, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said to the Financial Times that the motion controllers will have little effect on the overall console race.
“Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine," said Wada. "Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function."
Still, Wada likes the potential of Project Natal. “As a user interface it’s fantastic and I think it will become standard,” he said.
Wada went on to note that he believes the industry slowdown is due to the lack of major releases by Nintendo during the first half of the year. Interestingly, he also thinks that Nintendo will release a new Wii with "with functionality more like that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3." He sees that console release happening by 2011 with perhaps a new controller.
It has been theorized by industry types for a while now that Nintendo will release a "Wii HD," most recently by Michael Pachter in his monthly IndustryGamers column.
