John Lanchester on gaming

Nintendo began life in the late 19th century as a maker of card games, and that emphasis on gaming survived their transition to newer technologies. That might sound like a truism – video-game maker has background in games – but as it happens the company’s two great rivals have different histories. Sony is a consumer technology company, Microsoft is a software company, and both have been more reluctant than Nintendo to understand that what people mainly want to do with games is play; their interest has recently focused more on their desire to ‘win the battle of the living-room’. Translated, that means to sell consumers a super-powerful omnicompetent console which sits in the corner of the room and gives the parent company a share of all sorts of potential future revenue streams. Sony’s PS3 is a wonder of the world, with two astounding new technologies inside, the multi-threading Cell computer chip and the new generation Blu-Ray Disc; the Xbox 360 is a powerful computer in its own right; but the much lower-tech Nintendo Wii is a lot more fun than either of them.