Last week at X06, an Xbox event in Barcelona, New Zealand movie director Peter Jackson announced a new games development studio called Wingnut Interactive – an offshoot of his highly successful movie production company Wingnut. The new venture will develop a “Halo series” for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. Full details haven’t emerged yet, but the games will have a movie quality to them and be interactive. They will almost certainly have an online component too. Not coincidentally, Peter Jackson is also producing the forthcoming Halo movie.
It was Jackson’s description of the new games which provoked excitement:
“It’s a form of entertainment that’s not a game and it’s not a film. It’s a filmic game experience. I think we’re on a threshold of a new way to tell stories. […] I wouldn’t even call these games in my mind, because I’m not a game designer. What I’m really interested in is taking ideas that could become films, but maybe they won’t be films … They’ll be steered into this technology that the Microsoft Game Studios people have developed.”
Peter Jackson at X06 – photo by Rune Fjeld Olsen
XBox Live Stats
It looks like XBox is ahead of both Sony and Nintendo in terms of online gaming entertainment – or at least moving towards the next generation Internet-based gaming experience the fastest. Xbox’s “top man in Australia” David McLean recently gave some stats about Xbox Live:
“…since launch last November, there have been 57,000 downloads from Xbox Live, more than two billion hours of gameplay have been logged on the service and more than eight million games have been downloaded from Xbox Live Arcade. He also emphasies that the Xbox 360 will have a nine-month head start on Nintendo’s Wii and will be a year ahead of Sony’s PlayStation 3.”
Nintendo’s Wii
If there is a dark horse in the online gaming industry, it is Nintendo and its upcoming Wii. The Wii user interface is designed around the concept of television channels, accessible using the pointer capability of the Wii Remote. It will also have a web browser – a version of the Opera web browser for use on the Wii, which will be free for all Wii users until June 2007.
Summary
In terms of innovation, all 3 (MS, Nintendo and Sony) are worth watching. Microsoft has the muscle and now the talent (Peter Jackson), but I’m tracking the Wii closely too.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)