Now is indeed the best time to watch innovation happen in the world of consoles.
Nintendo is hedging its bets on making games that more people want to and can play, targeting markets never hit before by video games starting with the DS (young women and adults: Nintendogs and Brain Training) and continuing with the Wii. They don’t need fancy graphics, they’re looking at new ways to game, innovation over graphics. Sadly they’ve really been playing softball this past year, I want to see some POWER coming from the console, and more neat Mii integration.
Sony is pushing for technology as they always do. Their games often do look the best, but it’s so early in the console’s life that no one can harness the power successfully (compare Final Fantasy 7 to 9, and 10 to 12, both show the increases in capability demonstrated in previous PlayStation consoles). They are tech powerhouses, which means they’re expensive, combined with the games it releases they clearly target hardcore gamers. LittleBigPlanet shows a great direction in breaking past the hardcore gamer and through to the gamer’s kids and family.
Microsoft’s kinda playing in the middle of this. Consider that they basically used the technology of PC gaming and built a neat Live system around it, and they didn’t enter the video game market until recently, they’ve had time to evaluate with hundreds of meetings what would work on a console. They can easily add new tech in such as the video input, and writing games for it is dead simple for coders not to mention you can release your game on PC for no significant extra development cost. They’re not excelling in innovation as demonstrated by their avatar adoption, they’re not taking many risks (one can’t after the fiasco of the red ring of death issue), they’re just sitting with a solid console and a solid development base, which is a great place to be for them.
We had a thread a few days ago about what the next tech in video games might be that also has some cool thoughts.