I have never boasted about my gaming abilities; hand me an Xbox Controller and I am all thumbs. While I am passionate about the gaming industry in India and expect it to be a core entertainment option for families, I have never been overly optimistic about it exploding into a multi-billion-dollar industry in India overnight. Therefore, it is no surprise that my Xbox gamer tag happens to be “Indiancynic”.
All this was true until the recently concluded E3 or the Electronic Entertainment Expo. This is easily the world’s biggest gaming show, where gaming companies, console makers and publishers gather at the LA Convention centre to showcase their latest wares and innovations. The show more than lived up to its hype. As I roamed the gargantuan halls, the excitement and passion in the air was tangible. Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Lara Croft, Masterchief from Halo — they were all there, walking the halls along with me, with thousands of exhibitors, media personnel and consumers from all over the world. The Big 3 console makers were there in full force: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. So were all the big publishers — EA, Konami, Ubisoft, and the Indian gaming biggie, UTV Ignition.
The gaming industry is undergoing a metamorphosis, as the big players are striving to move their audiences beyond the core gamer to families and kids, making gaming mainline. Plus, there has been a lot of buzz about some groundbreaking innovation from Microsoft. The Kinect for Xbox stole the show at E3, with its motion sensing capabilities. It left the audience floored with the mind blowing experience of watching gameplay based on human behaviour. There was a lot of excitement over its functionality as a social media tool as well (video chat, picture sharing, etc). Sony launched the PlayStation Move, though it does use a controller akin to Nintendo Wii. There was also 3D, with Nintendo unveiling of the 3DS, the first portable gaming console to offer a 3D gaming experience, without the need for 3D glasses.
Motion sensing is particularly exciting since it has the ability to transcend gaming into interactive entertainment, and hence acquire new audiences. Kinect’s motion-sensing technology, for example, dispenses with the hand-held and instead makes you the controller; so the experience stems from how you want to interact with onscreen figures, making gameplay much more intuitive. The Kinect senses your movements, your gestures as well as voice, and changes the way you play and experience entertainment. So, a game like Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, for instance, lets you try a variety of training modes by tracking your body throughout and even provides feedback to help you correct your posture. Perhaps the most fun game was MTV’s Dance Central, where the Kinect teaches you to dance like a pro.
The above games apart, four other titles were launched for the Kinect (Kinectamals, Kinect Adventures and Joyride), the impetus clearly being on interactive gaming. However, hardcore gamers were not ignored, with the announcement of Halo: Reach, Metal Gear Solid 3, Gears of War 3, Fable 3 and more such titles. The big surprise of the show was the launch of the new Xbox — black, sleek, quieter and smaller with a solid 250-GB memory and inbuilt WiFi.
Back in India, I think, it is the intuitiveness offered by the Kinect that is going to change the way families connect in the living room. Indian families love to spend time together and have fun. We are also emotional and expressive people: we gesture a lot while we play; we talk and emote. So, motion gaming, and the Kinect, is a perfect fit for Indian psyche, where you control the game with your gestures and your voice. It eliminates the “technology” between you and your entertainment experience, and makes it much more intuitive. Indians, I believe, will love it. And, I believe, this will spur on a whole new wave of gaming in India, with games becoming a legitimate and large part of mass entertainment, faster than we all believe.
May be it’s time I changed my gamer tag…
(The author is regional director, Entertainment & Devices Division, Microsoft India)
