Sony's Move With the PlayStation 3

We give our take on the PlayStation Move, Sony's latest attempt to dethrone Nintendo and hinder Microsoft.

Motion controls can lead to some very innovative gameplay ideas, at That Gaming Site (TGS) many of us are following the "motion control industry" with great enthusiasm. As of late perhaps the most talked about motion control device is Sony's Move, unfortunately Sony really doesn't understand why Nintendo's Wii has built up its huge fanbase, nor do they understand why many of the so-called “Hardcore Gamers” don’t like the Wii.

Speaking to the Financial Times, SCEA’s head of Marketing, Peter Dille, believes that the Move’s precision is what will set it apart from both the Wii Remote and Microsoft's Project Natal:

“The biggest differentiator is the technology itself – the Wii has been wildly successful but at the end of the day it’s not a very precise experience and it relies on the wand.

“Microsoft’s approach appears to be no wand, no controller, just a camera, which means that your body’s the user interface. Our solution and point of differentiation is around precision, because we’ve got the camera – the Playstation Eye – and the motion controller which has the light at the tip, and the camera tracks the light very precisely in 3D space.

“The combination of that precision along with the button on the controller means that you’re now able to develop and play games that you can’t do with the Wii and Natal. That level of precision gives you different types of experiences like a [first-person] shooter and we can do casual games as well.”

The thing that Sony doesn’t understand is that the Wii was never about the precision of the Wii Remote but rather about the software. Games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Zelda, and Mario Kart are what made people want to buy a Wii – not the fact that the controls were as precise as a pin point. While there definitely is a market looking for precision with their motion controls, is it big enough to warrant such a push?

Many gamers have bemoaned the use of motion control in so-called “hardcore” titles, and would prefer a traditional controller over the Wii remote, some titles even offer this option. Why play a game like SOCOM 4 with motion, when you’d be more accurate with a Dualshock?

Dille also mentioned software for Move in the interview:

“We’ll have family-friendly games like ping pong or archery, to games for young kids like iPet [Eye Pet], which is a very creative game. It’s a virtual pet you nurture and it comes out to play with you on your carpet using the Eye. You can give it commands, you can pet it and it will respond, you can give it tasks, it will fly a plane…

“It’s too early to say what the killer app or signature game is but we’ll continue through the spring and late summer before we make a decision on which game is the poster child or the best one to move the Move.”

Even if we look at the casual market – does the PS3 seem more appealing to the casual gamers than the Wii? Most likely not. The Wii has the casual games that people crave, and Nintendo even has many new hardcore games coming in 2010 for the Wii that could do well on the system.

Sure, Eye Pet might seem cool at first, but unlike Wii Sports, it doesn’t offer the illusion that it’ll be fun for a longer period of time. And anyone in the gaming industry knows that the hardcore gaming audience won’t be satisfied with a game like Eye Pet, so who exactly is it for? Eye Pet has already received mixed reviews from critics, although historically there have been cases where titles didn't review well but became a hit with consumers.