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(原文出自News Week，节选)
A line formed at an Old Navy store in Raleigh, N.C., as spectators took a break from Christmas shopping to watch a pair of dancers let loose to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” There was no DJ or iPod hookup in sight. The women were playing MTV Games’s Dance Central for Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 as a way to instill a little energy into the shopping monotony. Kinect does away with the controller, letting players use body motions to navigate virtual experiences―hence, the dance-party atmosphere. The tween girls waiting in line asked their moms to finish dancing so they could get a turn. Retail stores such as Macy’s and Old Navy are offering a game the whole family can enjoy, which just might keep customers shopping a little longer.
As more consumers are entering the videogame space through such new portals as Facebook and iPhone’s Game Central, console makers want a piece of this broader audience, too. So they’re turning to new interactive experiences that are simple enough for anyone to jump into and have fun with. At the same time, relapsed gamers in their 30s and 40s who grew up on Pac-Man and Pong are returning to these simplified game experiences that do away with complex controllers and focus on instant interaction, like Microsoft’s Kinect Joy Ride and Electronic Arts’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. “One of the biggest challenges to expanding the size of the console gaming market has been the difficulty many new users have learning complex controls,” says Sean Levatino, designer of Sports Champions at Zindagi Games. “By creating game experiences that allow natural, intuitive movements, we open the doors of electronic gaming to anyone who has ever thrown a ball or tossed a Frisbee disc.”
The popularity of Kinect and PlayStation Move motion-controlled games are helping the game industry see black this holiday season. November game sales raked in close to $3 billion in the U.S., according to research tracking firm the NPD Group, an 8 percent increase over last November. While software sales climbed 4 percent to $1.46 billion and hardware sales were up 2 percent to $1.08 billion, accessories such as controllers and cables were the real cash cows, skyrocketing 69 percent to $413.13 million. “November sales represent the best November on record in terms of new physical retail sales,” says NPD videogame analyst Anita Frazier. “It bests November 2008 by roughly $30 million, and that time frame was at the height of the music-dance genre sales.”
While Kinect completely does away with any controllers and lets a player’s body movements control the action through an advanced camera that tracks movement, Sony’s PlayStation Move takes a page out of Nintendo’s Wii playbook and offers more accurate motion-controlled play by using wands that replicate a player’s real-world motions instantly into the on-screen action.
When you consider that Microsoft has sold 47.4 million Xbox 360s globally and that Sony has more than 43.2 million PlayStation 3s in homes around the world, there’s still a huge audience of gamers who are sitting out this first wave of optional motion-sensor games. While every game for Wii has been designed to take advantage of upper-body interaction, only select games for Sony and Microsoft support this new technology. Besides, some of the biggest games of the year, including Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft’s Halo: Reach, do not support Kinect or PlayStation Move.
