How Sony and Microsoft Hope To Crack the Motion Control Market 138
An editorial at Eurogamer delves into what Sony and Microsoft hope to achieve with their upcoming console motion control systems, despite entering the market several years after Nintendo set the standard. "The cards Sony has placed on the table this week suggest one answer to that question. It sees PlayStation Move as being an upgrade path for Wii owners — an invitation to the tens of millions of consumers who have invested in Nintendo's platform to swim upstream to the more powerful, HD-enabled system. Yet even Sony's most optimistic view of the market will be tempered by a dose of realism here. ... What's more likely — and what Sony are probably quietly hoping to achieve a significant proportion of the Move's success through — is that the technology will expand the appeal of the PS3 in the family setting." The Digital Foundry blog has an in-depth look at the PlayStation Move from Sony's event at the Game Developers Conference, saying, "... if there was one positive you could take away from the event, it was that Move is clearly a far more precise implementation than the Wiimote. Some of the games felt clearly more 'tactile' than the Wii equivalents."
surprise surprise (Score:1, Insightful)
is that the technology will expand the appeal of the PS3 in the family setting
Well the PS3 is a 'bloke' machine to show off great graphics on shitty games.
Marketing it as a blu ray player failed. Marketing it as a games machine failed.
They've got to try something else.
Games??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm talking about Raving Rabbids, Wii Sports, and such.
My parents *NEVER* had any kind of console in the house, even when we were kids. They never even liked video games. Until they tried some on my sister's Wii. Now they bought one with many games. They're in their 60s. So unless SONY can target that kind of audience, it won't work.
The Wii has the games, and also the price. It's the least expensive of all three.
Re:What's wrong with gamepads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gamepads are fine, for certain games. Mortal Kombat-type fighters and platformers come to mind. Contrast to Wii Tennis with a Wiimote or an FPS with a mouse and keyboard. You have to pick the right tool for the job: if the challenge of a game is the disconnect between the player and the character being controlled the game will be frustrating rather than fun.
Sturgeon's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
For every good Wii game that comes out it seems around one hundred awful games join the fray.
It's been that way since the Atari 2600. Sturgeon's Law: every console's library is 90% crud.
Re:What's wrong with gamepads? (Score:5, Insightful)
We tend to forget as gamers how unnatural using the gamepad for playing games was at first for many people, you know when our parents tried to pick up the controller and they could barely control the character? The great thing about the Wiimote and other motion is to try to come up with a control scheme that is more natural and integrates into what they already know unconsciously as human being.
Re:And here I thought people bought the Wii (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. When the PS3 launched here in the UK, it was £425 ($827 at the time), and the Wii was ~£130. Okay, you can get a PS3 now for £250, but the original PS3 even out-priced many serious gamers, you could forget the PS3 being a Christmas gift for most kids too.
New release games are also expensive on the PS3, £39 to £49, compared to Wii's £25 to £35 price ranges.
They're going to fail (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see either Sony or Microsoft succeeding, regardless of the quality of their actual products. The problem is that the "hardcore" gamers, the ones who flock to the Playstation and Xbox, don't want a motion controller. They're content to play games with a gamepad. Meanwhile, the more "casual" gamers have already gone with the Wii. Anybody looking into buying a new system with motion controls will see that the Wii is $200 while the PS3/360 are ~$300 plus the cost of the motion controllers.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the products (I suspect Natal's going to suck hard, though the feedback from Move seems to be pretty good) and everything to do with what people want. If Sony or Microsoft released a new, cheaper console with a motion controller packed in, I could see that being successful. As it stands, I can't see too many people dropping $100 to play LittleBigPlanet with a motion controller.
Re:Intentional disconnect between player and game (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly!
I played mario kart on the wii using the wheel and that was really fun. Not more fun or less fun than using a 'classical' gamepad. Just differently fun.
Wiimote can not be the optimal controller to do the job well. But I am not trying to optimize my karting play. I am trying to have fun!
Re:Intentional disconnect between player and game (Score:4, Insightful)
DDR players can hit more steps per second on a keyboard than on a dance pad (compare Tedo typing 0x1311 [youtube.com] to Iamchris4life tap-dancing A [youtube.com]), yet players still use a dance pad for some reason.
As a part time achievement whore on the 360 I recently came across the webcam accessory with the game "You're In The Movies". I figured a 20 dollar webcam would be nice to replace my ancient pre-Creative Webcam III cam and the game would offer a few points.
I ended up completing all the standard missions of the game even going so far as to improvise my own green screen to improve detection quality.
My reason?
It was fun.
Re:What's wrong with gamepads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seconded.
I have a Wii and an XBox. Personally, 99% of the games are more fun on the XBox. Why? Because it can be quite frustrating to aim with a wobbly aiming stick at something. Most of the Wii games are actually gimmicky, geared to showcase the controller rather than actually being a game with a story behind it.
Be honest: Take a Wii game and strip the novelty value of the controls. How much is left?
Re:And here I thought people bought the Wii (Score:3, Insightful)
Wii used to be cheaper than the other ones. Today, the wii and the xbox 360 are at the same price ( $199 ). But the games for the wii are cheaper. They are a lot of very fun games on the wii for $15. I don't think it is the case for xbox 360 (but I don't own one so I do not know for sure)
Re:Games??? (Score:5, Insightful)
SingStar, Buzz!, Rock Band etc. (OK not Sony themselves but...)
Before the Wii, the PS2 was the king of casual console games.
Motion Control? (Score:3, Insightful)
I read the title of the summary and hoped that I could watch the comedy as Sony and Microsoft would try to compete against Siemens, GE Fanuc, Mitsubishi, etc, (you know, actual motion control vendors), but then I read it was about video games.
Oh well. So much for "news for nerds"
--
BMO
Re:They're going to fail (Score:3, Insightful)
PS3 as an upgrade to the Wii (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a Wii - it was the first current-generation console we purchased. We did eventually buy a PS3, but in large part it was because our old DVD player died - we figured if we were going to have to live with discs a while longer, we might as well have the option of watching Blu-Ray (through Netflix; I don't have much interest in purchasing most movies). Of course we did buy a few games for the PS3; but in the end we still end up playing much more on the Wii because it just seems to be more enjoyable.
I know there are lots of Slashdotters that really get into the high-def, shoot-em-in-the-head-repeatedly (or cut-them-into-multiple-pieces) games; but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of variety or innovation in the PS3 games that I've looked at. The graphics are certainly stunning; but so many of these games are just variations on the same theme. If these new controllers end up leading to a wider range of games, then great! But if they end up just offering yet another way to swing that sword or shoot that gun, I can't see them having much impact - the people who want to spend lots of time playing those sorts of games seem perfectly happy mashing buttons.
Re:Games??? (Score:2, Insightful)
The price is really the key. They need to drop the base model PS3 to $199 -- easiest way to do this is to go the "Arcade" route, lose the hard drive and put all the data on a flash chip or SD card. That would allow them to compete on both fronts against the Wii and 360. The next thing they need is to arrange licensing so that publishers can release shovelware at a $40 launch price.
At $299 for the base model and $60 games they're not going to win over any casual gamers. What makes those gamers casual is that they don't care about "upgrading to HD", they just want something that's cheap. The big hurdle to overcome is the fact that the PS3 wasn't built for this kind of sales strategy. Nintendo really cornered the market when they broke ranks and designed a console that is built on last-gen technology. That gives them a competitive advantage no matter where the price goes, because they can afford to be cheaper than the other guy, and their audience cares only about price. Sony and MS now want to capture the huge market of casual gamers but that strategy is poorly supported by the expensive systems that they are trying to sell.
Re:They're going to fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with gamepads? (Score:2, Insightful)
And the bad thing about Wiimote is that you have to keep your hand absolutely still or the stupid thing decides you're trying to swing it around. That's the only kind of control Wiimote's motion control really allows. Shake or swing it, and your character does something, usually completely unrelated to the motion; try to replicate the actual motion of the Wiimote in the gameworld, and control becomes an exercise in frustration due to the lack of tactile feedback and the inaccuracy of motion detection.
Wii games use motion control as a gimmick. The actual control is usually done with the joystick (the "nunchaku") and buttons, and shaking either the joystick or the Wiimote is used as one of the buttons - and an inaccurate one at that, with the added bonus of firing randomly whenever you move. That doesn't make anything easier, just more annoying.
I truly wish we can get rid of this motion control craze back to gamepads with joysticks.
Re:Games??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More precise? (Score:3, Insightful)
What jensen404 said is basically correct. For motion/waggle the Wiimote has an accelerometer and for pointing it does have a IR camera which tracks the two groups of LEDs in the sensor bar. The processing of the picture happens inside the Wiimote and all that gets transmitted over the Bluetooth protocol is the position of the points.
The major difference between both devices in the end is simply that the Move controller, thanks to the camera and gyro sensor, knows where it is in 3D space, while the Wiimote doesn't, it only knows how fast it was accelerated. Thus the Wiimote can only react rather crudely to movements and the aiming is limited to being relative to the sensorbar, instead of to the monitor, thus you need a cursor instead of having the ability to directly aim at targets on the screen as with a lightgun.