When I first read the title of this article in the LA Times, I thought that the article would be about young boys, getting a chance to play a new and improved video game that allowed them to feel like they were not play driving, but actually sitting behind the wheel of the car of their dreams….
And then I read on…
Nathan Olivarez-Giles opens this article with this… “The scene is reminsicent of teenage boys standing around an arcade machine watching a friend play Donkey Kong or Street Fighter. There are long lines and laughter and cheers from those huddled around the gaming screens. But here at Los Angeles Auto Show, these boys are grown men, many wearing suits, and this isn’t Donkey Kong.”
Lexus, Ford, Volkswagen, and Hyundai all had simulator booths at the L.A auto show. I thought the purpose of having the simulators at the show was a sales and marketing scheme. You know make them feel like they are driving the actual car, and then make them want to buy it, but from reading the article, it doesn’t seem that way at all. It seems like they just wanted to have an alternative to just walking around looking at cars and actually give them something exciting to do and something that brought out the kid in all of them. Men love cars, and the long lines at the Auto Show obviously proved it. This article also proved how technology just keeps expanding. In the article, he talked about how the VW Booth had a display where people could pick up an ipod touch and play real racing GTI, whic is actually a free app for the Iphone. At the Hyundai booth, people can play Forza Motorsport 3 on an Xbox 360 and race a tricked-out Hyundai Genesis Coupe, which is available as a free download for gamers at home on the Xbox Live Marketplace. (i.e. more distractions) We are so technology dependent that we don’t even have to have a craving to play a game, watch a movie, or show because we can do this from our cell phones. And movies? We can just watch them on our Xbox, no need to leave home and pay 10 dollars for a movie.
“Don Watkins, a 58-year-old contractor who installed much of the carpet for the L.A. Auto Show, said he was impressed by the Ford video game which used hydraulics to shake the chair he was sitting in as he directed the game’s steering wheel over rocks and bumps in the game.”
He said…
“It was a lot of fun and I’d do it again,” Watkins said. “But I was disappointed that I rolled the truck and the game didn’t show a cracked windshield or something. They should have fans to blow wind in your face too.”
Lexus, Ford and VW will be keeping their stations open until December 13
“You can come to the Auto Show and you can learn just about everything possible about each car and you sit in them and you can look at them, but the one thing you can’t do here with these cars is drive them,” said Sean Lenihan, who was manning a $50,000 gaming setup at the Hyundai booth he rented to the automaker through his company, Xtension Marketing.
No comments:
Post a Comment