Heyy,
Well for my third blog I thought it would be a good time to talk about what I think will happen with the motion sensing business in gaming. With Wii's Motion Plus, Microsofts Natal and Sony's Wand all announced (in the case of Wii been released) now we can compare them a tiny bit.
Its obvious from the start that Wii is doing suberb in the business, selling like double the ammount of PS3's. So in case you've been living under a rock, I'll give you a brief talk of the Wii.
Wii
Well the Wii is from the makers of Nintendo (who brought us DS, Gamecube, 64, SNES etc.). This is a very small console that weighs 1.2kg and is very light to handle. The Wii has a sensor bar attatchement which sits either above or below the TV and via the wonders of Infra-red can track the Wiimote's position. The Wiimote has built in accellerometres and infra-red technology to sense its position in relation to the sensor bar. It can track the speed of which it moves in a number of directions using the accellerometres. The Wii is more directed at a very wide range of audience with some more "hardcore" games (Mad World, No More Heroes), but mostly casual games (Wii Sports, Super Mario Galaxy) and along with that heaps and heaps of minigames directed at families.
The Wii accuracy with its WIimote has quite a bit to be desired as sometimes it can not pick up small movements. This is where the Wii Motion Plus attatchment comes in. At a price of another 30 bucks Australian you can buy a tiny attatchment that goes into the connecter where usually a nunchuck or other attatchment would go on. The Wii Motion Plus makes true 1:1 tracking so now the Wii can monitor you more closely! So you will no longer have to do either very large or very small movements so that the wii can track you but more precise.
In my opinion I think that Wii Motion Plus would definetly add to the Wii experience. It can be very frustrating when you need to do very precise movements in a game, however the wii does not recognize them. With 1:1 action the Wii will be able to do what it wanted to do for a very long time. My score so far for the Wii Motion Plus in innovation is only 6/10 as it dosen't really add a lot, only makes it more accurate without bringing new things to the table.
XBOX 360
The XBOX 360 is Microsoft's very trouble plagued console. It weighs in at around 3kg and is shapped mostly like a rectangular prism. A hard drive can be added to the top of it (at a heft price) which is just snapped onto the top of the 360 and can be bought in 20GB, 60GB or 120GB increments. 120GB hard drives cost $150 AUD at retail. The 360 has been a very trouble plagued system and has faced a lot of critisism due to it, however has recieved strong sale figures due to it been the first "next-gen" console to be released. Some of the most common troubles are the disk scratching problems, the E74 error code and the most well known, the dreaded Red Ring of Death (RROD).
Microsoft's answer to Wii's massive success is their own "Project Natal". This is a camera which will sit below or above your TV and track your movements. It will not be 1:1 accuracy and when it was playtested, players said it wasn't quite accurate and was a little less accurate than the Wii is currently. At E3 among some adds a program call Milo was shown which was a kid who interacts with you and can regonize your voice.
Natal is definetly a 10/10 on the innovation front however the big question is will it be worth it? This technology will probably not come cheap, and as it is Microsoft will have just been made a lot more expensive :). The games in my prediction, as you do not use a controller, will be very casual in my opinion and aimed at families. There will be a whole lot of minigames desgined like all the dreaded Wii minigames and probably a disapointing lack of actual good games designed for it. However if Microsoft and game developers do this right it could be a good success. If say a certain game developer made a game and wanted to put a side feature relating to the game on it, as well as having the main game, there could be a special feature extra. You could only use this special feature if you have Natal and it would just be a not as complicated part to the game, maybe just a racing sequence or a kung foo battle without any controllers. Just a side extra feature that ties into the game a bit and dosen't need complicated controls. This would definetly in my opinion be the way to go.
Natal may or may not be a sucess and it depends on wether there are games to play on it. Will developing for a game that dosen't use any controls but just movement sensing be easy and cost effecient? Or Will it just be forgotten and left for dead (not reffering to the game by the way). I guess only time will tell!
PS3
In my opinion definetly the best console out there (I'll back my reasons up in my next blog by the way). The PS3 is a media and gaming powerhorse, been able to play blu-ray is its main multimedia feature. Blu-ray is the way of the future as it can hold 25GB's one one single layer of disc (50GB on a dual layer blu-ray disk). Sony wants to in the future put both a game and a movie on the same disc as an option, movie games of course. So you could have the Wolverine game and movie on the same disc! (True a bit of a gimic but it would be cool...). The PS3 has great exclusive titles and overall quality of games.
The PS3's answer to motion controlling is seen as a more "hardcore" gaming tool than the Wii and Natal are aiming at. In the E3 demonstration a sword and shield along with bow and arrow and a paintgun was used showing it could be used for those purposes. So what is Sony's answer? A magic wand :).
This is like a stick with a head thing on the top that is purple. (That sounded just a bit sus). This wand provides true 1:1 control and was showcased at E3 2009. Of course this is a controller so has buttons and could be used in more "hardcore" games, picture playing God of War 3 with your 2 magic wands a sword and shield... ok don't picture it as a mini side feature I talked about earlier. At E3 Sony announced there will be support for a number of these to be used in conjunction with each other, namely 2, a sword and a shield. If you haven't checked out the demonstration, you should, its cool. The wand is tracked by the Playstation Eye which will prove to be very accurate. What I think should happen is Sony jim off Natal a bit and have the ability to both accurately track the wand, but at the same time, not as accurately track how the body is moving.
The innovation factor for me with the magic wand is 7/10 as it is new for Sony and the playstation however is not that new in hardware terms. This is the stick that I am hoping will be a success but again, only time will tell!
All of the big companies answers to motion control are good and some will no doubt be more sucessful than others. Only time will tell which is the best though! Oh well this is a quite a long blog so next blog I'll be saying PS3 and cross platform games you definetly should have :D. Until next time,
Bye!
PSN: trey4li4e17
Ben
