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Comments: 116 + - Hardware: Sony's PS3 Motion Controller Gets Demoed and Named on Thursday March 11 2010, @11:38AM
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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.'"
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Is the controller hard to use? (Score:5, Funny)
I think I speak for all /.ers when I say that I can't wait to get my hands on this shaft. Does it require an especially tight grip? If there's a danger I can wear out my arm manipulating it, should I switch to my left hand occasionally? Are the balls just decorative or do they serve a function? And how am I rewarded at the end of the game?
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Playing with the balls is markedly different than playing with your Wii.
There's more cupping and less stroking motions.
Re:Is the controller hard to use? (Score:5, Funny)
...And how am I rewarded at the end of the game?
Uh, with blindness?
Parent
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Kitten genocide.
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Achtung! Don't not throw controller at PS3's remaining good eye!
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I love that myth.
Honestly, the FIRST thing I did was remove the useless wrist straps. I have had a LOT of Wii players at the house and never had a Wiimote go flying.
Honestly, just because a few people had kids that needed to calm down and were swinging their arms as hard as they can does not mean the other 98% of people out there have that problem. I even got rid of the ugly and ooky feeling squishy silicone head protectors off our wii plus motion enhancers. I dont have head wounded people everywhere.
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Two-wand play (Score:2)
The Eye Toy is back (Score:3, Interesting)
I have the Eye Toy for the PS2, some of the games are not totally worthless. It's actually tolerably good at recognizing one person's outline. I'd like to see someone do this with SONAR or LIDAR so that it didn't matter if your clothes were the same color as the background. I know the modern stuff is better but it's still not great.
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This has more in common with the Wii controller, a better comparison would be between Microsoft's Project Natal and the Eye Toy.
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Except, the whole system uses the Eye Toy instead of an IR camera.. did you even read the summary?
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I meant that the Eye-toy tracked your body, which is what Project Natal does. While Sony's motion tracks your hands and what they're doing, which is what the Wii controller does.
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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
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This system was designed to address exactly the problem you mention [newscientist.com] with picking out things in low contrast, funnily enough.
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Since you said that, I looked it up on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. That's keen, it's sort of a monocular bat peripheral.
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"I'd like to see someone do this with SONAR or LIDAR so that it didn't matter if your clothes were the same color as the background."
Sounds like Natal is what you're looking for then as that's one of the problems it solves.
Whether it'll be any good in practice we'll have to wait and see. I'm guessing E3 will be the best bet for decent news on Natal and for more on this.
A better name (Score:3, Funny)
How about the "Vibrating Orb of Pleasure". If you think there were a lot of vibrating "massage" mini games on XBL Arcade, just think of what you would get with this thing. A vibrating controller with a big(lubable, not sure that's a word) plastic head on it. Lot of ugly emo girls with eye cameras are just waiting to take this thing into Playstation Home.
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Dedicated vibrating Playstation widgets are so 2004 [gamegirladvance.com].
Looks like an enhanced Wiimote (Score:2)
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So hard to say.. when the Wii came out it went from wtf is Nintendo smoking, to ZOMG the games will be amazing to... somewhere in between. It really comes down to the games, right now I'm not going to go out and buy either the Move or Natal until I see the games and how they make use of it. If it actually add's to the fun and isn't a gimmick i'll go for it.
Right now I haven't seen anything demo'ed with Natal that makes me go must buy. Amazingly cool tech yes, but still waiting for the "killer app". Same
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With Natal, the whole question is: will it work. Having full-body tracking of an articulated skeleton without any special tracking target (like a wand) is obviously the ideal - if it works.
Re:Looks like an enhanced Wiimote (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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The live demos so far suggest latency and exaggerated motions are going to feature quite prominently, especially now MS are saying
The "Move" (Score:2)
And I thought “Wii” was a stupid name.
Re:The "Move" (Score:5, Funny)
Wiimove your pweconceptions.
Parent
lol (Score:4, Funny)
Thing totally looks like a dildo. There better be some vibraty downloadables on the PSN...otherwise, they are missing out on a HUGE market for this product.
Where have I seen that before...? (Score:2)
Looks like Sony ripped off the open-source Atlas Gloves (http://atlasgloves.org/) so they could get gesture control without bumping into Nintendo's patents.
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.
Parent
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Re:It will never be big (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is why I think this will fail. I mean, Guitar Hero wasn't really A "periphreal" game, it was a game that was only minorly more expensive and came with a guitar controller. It happened to be a really popular game, which then other games were made to be compatable with the controller (eventually). Wii Fit has the same approach. It's a game first, and a controller second. Sony's approach is totally backwards for a Non-standard controller. All of the games are called "Sports Champions" and "Shooter" and "Shovelware", which does not bode well for a REASON to buy this controller. You must create a game that makes a reason for your controller to exist, not vice versa when you're controller isn't packaged with your system.
Parent
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I remember reading about SCEfoo testing a wand controller with the PS2 eyetoy, never went beyond prototype though.
Also there are two coontrol addons that I know of that became very very popular: the PS2 eyetoy (that thing sold more than the Network Adapter!), and the original PSone Dual Shock. We have to separate controller add-ons, which sometimes succeed, vs other add-ons, which mostly don't.
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So how did the Guitar Hero and Rockband series manage to pull off being some of the top selling titles ever then? Even the Wii Balance board has done well.
The problem is, most aftersales addons are just complete afterthoughts. Well designed, fun addons do just fine.
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I agree. There have only been a few peripherals that I can think of that have succeeded.
Dual Shock - became standard equipment for the later PS1's
Dual Shock 3 - became standard equipment for later PS3's
Guitar Hero guitar
maybe the Rock Band stuff.
I like my GunCon and Street Fighter TE Fightstick, but I'd be hesitant to call them truly successful. Both are pretty much niche controllers and probably are/were profitable.
The Move controller has a high barrier to entry since it requires an Eye and the ball contro
DualShock (Score:2)
Personally, I can't wait to play RE5 with the Move, the way it was meant to be played. Before I heard it would be supported, I was wishing the game came out on Wii instead.
EyeToy? (Score:4, Informative)
"EyeToy [wikipedia.org]" was the PS2 camera. PS2/Move use the "Playstation Eye [wikipedia.org]"
Bringing Gaming to My Media Center (Score:3, Interesting)
The Dualshock 3 functions terrificaly as an interface to fire up Netflix, Pandora, and Blu-ray discs...can't say I've used it as a game controller very much, however.
I think the Wii tainted me...the whole dual analog setup is pretty tough for me to get back into. Maybe the Move will be able to merge graphics and play-abiliy, and make PS3 gamers out of guys like me.
Simpsons DID IT...SIMPSONS DID IT.. (Score:2, Funny)
No way (Score:2)
Sorry, but I refuse to play video games with a controller that looks like the most popular "personal massager [amazon.com]" of all time.
I see "look and feel" lawsuit from Hitachi coming.
Does anyone want this? Seriously? (Score:2)
I have a PS3, I play it all the time, and I have a Wii as well so I'm not averse to motion controls... but really, does anyone want this?
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Pictures (Score:2)
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The PS3 Eye is not the same as the PS2's Eyetoy. SCEfoo did test out a wand controller prototype with the PS2 Eyetoy, but it never went beyond that, probably for the reasons you state. But the PS3 Eye is a better camera than the Eyetoy, so maybe they can pull it off now.
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there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated
Smacking myself in the face with the cable is how I keep myself humble.
Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Dona eis requiem sempiternam. THWAP
And if you think this is a biblical reference, please don't mod this.
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