Sony's PS3 Motion Controller Gets Demoed and Named 116
itwbennett writes "In a 45-minute press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced its motion controller, officially named the Playstation Move. The Move consists of the Eye Toy (a camera pointed at the player) and a wand-like controller with a lighted ball at the end and a range of buttons on the shaft, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Alternatively games can use two of the wands, or one wand and one "sub-controller" that has an analog stick (the camera is always required),' says Smith. 'If this is sounding very much like the Wii's Remote and Nunchuk well, you aren't far off (though at least there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated).' Here are Smith's thoughts on the demo: 'All in all, the demos seemed OK, but I, at least, wasn't really blown away by any of them. That said, it's always hard to tell how well these systems work without actually trying them for yourself. You need to feel the connection (or lack thereof) between what your hands are doing and what's going on on-screen in order to be sure. For example, in the boxing demo the player did a quick spin move that led to a roundhouse punch. It's hard to say if his motion triggered a pre-set action (a 'combo') or if the system was able to track the controller that accurately, and was able to 'connect the dots' from when his body briefly occluded the wand to when it reappeared.'"
It will never be big (Score:5, Insightful)
No significant add-on every does well for a console for a very simple reason: if its not built-in to the core system, game designers are very leery of designing around it.
You just have to look at the history of the market. The best example is controllers. There were 4+ controller add-ons for the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Genesis -- all relegated to the fringes of profitability. Why spend development time making a 4-player mode when there probably wasn't going to be more than 10% of the market who could even had the capability? And what fraction of that will buy your game? It was just plain 'ol 'bad return on investment'.
Flash forward to the N64; 4 controllers! What happens? Practically every game has 4-player modes, because you *know* the system has the capability. Sony & Microsoft saw it was a good idea and followed suit. Ironic, given what we're talking about -- more history repeating itself ;)
That isn't to say its not worth making add-ons like this. The fact that they keep making them suggests to me that enough money is being made to make them worthwhile. But I've yet to see an after-market add-on that more than a fraction of games on that system supported.
I assume Sony knows this, so they're probably just putting a toe in the water to see if its worth building this into their next-gen system. They'll probably make some money off this, but there's no way in hell this is going to steal much market share from the Wii -- there simply won't be many decent games. If the Wii has taught as anything, its that shoehorning motion control into a game doesn't really work; to work right the game needs to really be designed with motion control in mind. Unfortunately, I suspect that's what we'll see of most PS3 Move games: it will be an afterthought.
Re:It will never be big (Score:5, Insightful)
No significant add-on every does well for a console for a very simple reason: if its not built-in to the core system, game designers are very leery of designing around it.
Wii Fit seems to be doing excellent. Guitar Hero and its ilk (even though you can only use the accessory for the same style game.)
So even though the old style accessories never took off, these modern ones have done rather well. But they also had an excellent bundled product, making them worthwhile.
Re:The Eye Toy is back (Score:3, Insightful)
But the system uses a camera, and so can still track your body as PS2 eye-toy games did - it doesn't have to be limited to purely monitoring the hand controllers. I think this is the way forward at the moment because you can have the best of both worlds.
I know Sony don't publicly have a system with pseudo-3D motion capture from 2D video yet, but they have been doing motion games for years and so far Natal is just a bunch of ideas and promises rather than proven tech. I think for Natal to work with games it is really going to need handheld accessories to make things feel right anyway. Not having any buttons to press at all just wouldn't work for a lot of games..