So Sony recently announced and showed off their motion control peripheral at the GDC. We also have Microsoft with Project Natal. Now I personally think that this means better games on both consoles, but what do you guys make of it?

mediocre game + fancy control scheme != good game. I actually find fancy controls stressful and detract from the gameplay. Generally the gameplay is worse because developers think the control scheme makes up for it and unforseen issues are encountered with respect to the controls.

E.g. Turning / aiming / moving with a wiimote. It difficult to do all 3 at the same time.

I much prefer fancy control schemes to be an improovement and not a replacement.
Vibration, facial/sound recognition. I have no interest in pratting around my living room like a tard.

I've owned a wii since it came out. To be honest the only game where I think the control scheme enhances gameplay is Wii sports and Wii Fit.

More will depend on the ingenuity of the developers than the technology itself.

Well, ingenuity is a big deal, but don't forget that the Wii doesn't have the best developers working on its games.

More games on the Wii were ruined by motion controls than enhanced.

Like gestures on web browsers, it's cool to have it, but it's not entirely dependable. For games, where timing is important, the unreliability of gestures just suck.

Quote: Original post by RivieraKid
mediocre game + fancy control scheme != good game.

No, but good game + better controls == better game. I personally find using the Wii controller for FPS type games to be a big improvement over standard console controllers. Try playing Metroid Prime for Wii (much better than gamecube), or even better, Resident Evil 4. Not once in either game did I ever look down when trying to look up, or have to invert the Y axis to suit my style, everything was just very intuitive from the start.

That said, I'm not real excited about these things for 360 or PS3. I already have a Wii, I don't feel my other systems really new controls at this point. But who knows, I've been surprised in the past.

Quote: Original post by Binomine
Like gestures on web browsers, it's cool to have it, but it's not entirely dependable. For games, where timing is important, the unreliability of gestures just suck.

Only if you use a sub-par gesture implementation, like the extensions for Firefox and Chrome. In Opera, on the other hand, gestures are (subjectively) around 98% reliable.

Same thing with the Wii: its control scheme is very effective when used correctly. Like mouse gestures, it is much more effective than traditional console control schemes.

I'm wary of the games, but both Natal and PS Move are extremely impressive technically. The problem is that if you look at the Wii, the motion controls there are used idiotically in nearly every case. The only exception is a small subset of the games by Nintendo themselves.

So the question comes down to whether Sony and MS can actually figure out how to put these things to good use. The demos at GDC of Move were sorta cool but mostly pretty weak. I'd really like to get in touch with someone from someone working on Move...I think we have tech that could help put those to good use.

I thought the ping pong demo was the holy grail of a tennis game, true 1:1 full interactive (ie body motion capture, 3d paddle position, etc..) and no latency. When the ball hit the paddle it was so life like, 1:1. Imagine this over the network, wow, it will bring and entire new generation to table tennis, tennis, and other tennis like games etc.. Since the paddle work is so analogous to real life sports.

Basically this is what people wanted for the Wii but it just didn't deliver and that ruled out alot of potential game genres for that platform. They still tried to make them of course but in a more limited capacity (ie using gesture waggle instead of 1:1 mo-caping). That and it seems the Wii audience isn't into hard core games so the traditionally larger studios shy away from it (with a few exceptions).

I think a highly accurate control device (be it Natal or Move) will open up new genres on the consoles which normally dominate on the PC (RTS and MMOs just off top of my head) and ofcoruse better FPS controls. Even the early Socom demo, the player was achieving more fidelity and targeting without aim-assist normally found on consoles faster and better.

-ddn

Theyre not competing with each other

natal is gonna be more used for party games or fitness stuf, where theres huge sales potentual unless it bombs ~50% chance either way, its not accurate enuf and has to much latency to work with standard games.

move just seems to be the wii controller on steroids, though does seem to be nearly 100% accurate.

Perosnally I believe both are too late in the game but move might be the catalyst for me to get a ps3, I havent had a console since the atari2600!