Ultimate battle: FIGHT!

Sat up in bed last night, I was watching a program which had a feature on a local MMA fighter. For those of you who dont know MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, if you have seen the film Never Back Down (if not, i recommend it) then its the fighting they do in that. As a concept, MMA is a brutal affair, and involves full force punches and kicks and various takedowns and alot of grappling, ultimate fighting, basically.

Now I have done martial arts for several years, from a few months of judo and karate to taekwondo and most recently the brazilian martial art capoeira. Judo is a sport not a martial art really, so we will leave that out of the following discussion. The other arts have a very different style of fighting to MMA, involving clean, clear moves and is alot more standoff and strategic, capoiera dosent even have 'fights' instead you have 'games' of it and it basically involves alot of showboating and looks very, very, very cool (when you can do it, and i cant, and yes, it sucks).

Now I can hear you all saying 'Why the hell is he talking about martial arts in a video game blog?!?!?' well the programme got me thinking about the big 3 and the console wars. You see MMA disolves into a straight out brawl, street style, no really strategy, just who ever can get the killer blow or the limp lock first wins, whereas taekwondo etc has a blow for blow, each move must be thought about mentality and both styles have a metaphor with the console wars.

The big 3 each have media briefings (press conferences, whatever) every E3, and it is at these events that the referral yells 'fight' and the match begins. You see each will begin touting the sales figures and history, how many games are coming out this year etc, the equivelant of a few light jabs and snap kicks to test your opponents guard. As the events get going, more powerful blows come, such as microsofts avatar system or sony's home (martial arts equivalent: side/round house kicks), eventually one will connect and they will get a point.

This prompts the others to increase thier fight, and this leads to move copying, such as avatars and home, which then leads to a change of tactics to try and win, and, in nintendos case, this change worked. Nintendo came into the fight with a completely different art, one that threw thier opponents off and caused them to get the upper hand. This is like bringing capoeira to a taekwondo match and it completely demolishing your opponent as they are unsure how to combat it effectively. This again leads to move copying to some extent, and learning from your mistakes and taking a similar approach. The increase in both sony and microsoft's casual games output is evidence of this, them attempting to learn capoeira if you will.

Eventually, the fight will get to the point where one combatant has the upperhand and will move in for the killer blow, and take down thier opponent, wether it is with one knock out strike or a series of well timed points scoring moves. The killer blows include the annoucment of Halo 3 or the totally left field WIImote or home. The well timed points scorers include FFXIII coming to 360.

If, however, the companies go the MMA route, it will be at the start of a new generation of hardware, the war disolving into an all out brawl, MMA style with each company trying to get its console out before the others and win the match before it has really begun. Microsoft did this, but the Wii was a sucker punch they couldnt have seen and it reverse thier arm lock on the market and got them into its own lock. , as it did with sony but this was more of a quick flurry of hard hitting blows to knock them out quick.

So, their you have it, martial arts and the console wars arent that different, maybe next E3, Jack Trenton, Reggie Fils-aime and J Allard could all go at it in a cage match and whoever wins is the winner of this console generation, it could work right?