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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Re: Motion Controller Confusion

Gaming industry analyst Mike Hickey, as posted on IGN, is calling for a price cut on the Nintendo Wii to hold off Microsoft and Sony’s release of their new motion controllers. Naturally I have a few thoughts on that.

First, the Wii is already the cheapest of the three systems. A further price cut could put the ‘budget item’ thought in consumers minds. They could see it – accurately or not – as an inferior product to it’s competitors simply because it’s so much cheaper, similar to what happened to the Gamecube.

Secondly, these new motion controllers worry me. Lord knows I want them to work, and I love the concept behind Project Natal in particular. However, these controllers will not be standard. Even if they were to bundle these new products with their systems going forward –and they won’t - there would still be thousands of consoles out there without a motion controller. Think about what’s happened to the Xbox 360 and the uncertainty of their hard drive. Developers can’t assume a player will have a hard drive on their 360, so you can’t plan for it and you can’t take full advantage of it. That’s going to be the fate of these new controllers, I feel. Game companies are going to either have to design two control setups for one game or focus solely on these new motion controllers if they want to take advantage of Microsoft and Sony’s new toys, and I don’t think either would work well (half-assed control for the former, limiting their market for the latter).

I think this is going to be a rough going when these new forms of control launch for all three companies, but I hope that we as gamers will get some great new experiences out of it and that the Big Three know what their doing. Alphasim out.

1 comment:

Arm73 said...

I agree completely man.
Those new motion sensitive controllers do look definitely interesting, but they will most certainly NOT replace the standard controller.
There will be a number of innovative games, yes, but the majority of the developers (must) will continue to develop with the classic controllers in mind, simply because the existing user base won't ditch their gamepads altogether .
They can't touch the Wii. Remember Nintendo took a huge risk by releasing the Wii with the Wii remote only, and forcing developers to use it paid off eventually.
Give the option to buy a Classic controller, some games support it, even though it used to be the wide standard. The majority of Wii games use the Wii remote.
On the other consoles, give the option to buy a motion sensitive controller and what will you get ?
Nothing that will even slightly budge Nintendo from their position.
Maybe, 'maybe' in the next console cycle if MS and Sony ditch the regular controllers altogether they might have a chance, but they'll loose compatibility with previous generation's software and we know it can't and won't happen at this point.....