Gamers on the Move: Reviewing the potential of motion controllers

May 3, 2010 - By Jason Hamilton

In November 2006, Nintendo introduced the Wii. The state-of-the-art gaming console quickly distinguished itself from previous generation consoles, with its accelerometer-equipped, wireless controllers and infrared sensors to determine its position in 3D space. This made for a great family experience in the family rooms around the world.

Suddenly, players were able to hold the controller like a tennis racket and actually feel like they were playing tennis in their homes. The fun didn’t stop there. Games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Mario Galaxy, and the various Guitar Hero titles took us from playing the game to actually being in the game. While the Wii was an instant hit and still is a top-seller among gaming consoles, it wasn’t long before talk on the street suggested that people weren’t using their Wii lightsabers, tennis rackets and guitars quite as often. For the parents and the hardcore gamers, the Wii quickly seemed to lose its charm. Was it a graphics or game play issue? Was it a content issue? Ultimately, I think it may have been a combination of all three.

Nintendo's Magical Wii Controller

Fast forward to the year 2010. Sony and Microsoft have announced their intentions to enter the realm of motion tracking game controllers. Both companies are putting their best foot forward with some new and innovative technologies, in a bid to get a piece of the economic action that Nintendo has, to date, singlehandedly dominated.

Sony’s offering is the PlayStation Move, which uses several technologies to capture the player’s motions and input. The most notable feature is the illuminated colored ball mounted to the top of the controller. Used in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye (a proprietary camera that connects to the PlayStation 3), your movements and position in the room are detected and computed in a similar way to how motion capture is used for CGI animation in movies. The advanced design of the device allows for very precise tracking of a player’s every move.

The PlayStation Move

Sony didn’t stop there, though. To calculate and detect subtle movements in a player’s wrist, they threw in a pair of inertial sensors, a three-axis linear accelerometer and a three-axis angular rate sensor. The PlayStation Move also contains a magnetometer for calibrating the controller’s orientation against the Earth’s magnetic field. Without a doubt, the PlayStation Move promises that a player’s every move will instantly be conveyed to the video game.

Not to be left behind, Microsoft has developed their own offering, in the form of Natal (pronounced Nuh-tal). Natal builds on dated camera-based motion control by using nothing more than the player’s body as a point of reference for input. Unlike the PlayStation Move, the player doesn’t have a controller to hold. Natal uses only a camera, which takes the concept of “being in the game” a step farther.

Microsoft's Natal with Xbox 360 in background

Natal’s camera is what truly sets it apart from Nintendo and Sony’s offerings. Instead of using a typical camera that senses motion and variations in the environment, Natal uses an infrared projector and a monochrome sensor to detect the human body. Everything else in the room is ignored by Natal. With older motion sensing cameras, the player needed to have a flat, single-colored wall behind them. A mounted picture or a chair in the room with different colors were most likely to be detected as motion input from the player. Thankfully for gamers, Natal fixes that.

Additional technologies used in Natal allows 48 points of articulation in the human body to be detected; even the fingers can be detected, depending on the player’s distance from the camera. These technologies will allow for increased depth perception, so the game will know if the player is moving forward or backward, as well as in what direction their arms and legs are moving.

Sony and Microsoft say they are reaching out to broader markets and are bringing a more vibrant and engaging interactive experience to gamers. While Move and Natal show a lot of promise in their technologies and abilities to capture motion accurately and precisely, this gamer sees a lot of hype. Sony and Microsoft have whet our appetites for their devices with announcing new game titles to be available at launch. Only a few have been made known, but both companies are promising a much larger library at launch. While this is a smart move, the games they’ve revealed to date do not seem appealing to an avid video gamer like me.

A good example of why these advances might just be hype was seen at the Game Developer’s Conference held in March 2010. A representative from Zipper Interactive was on-hand to demonstrate using the Move while playing Zipper’s upcoming third-person shooter, SOCOM 4. With the product description of the Move controller, one might expect the representative to be out of his seat and using the Move controller to aim. Instead, he sat calmly in his chair holding a Move in his hand and using only his thumbs to move about and shoot. He wasn’t “in the game” at all. I suddenly saw a product that seemed like nothing more than marketing hype.

Sony and Microsoft must encourage the development of games that offer gamers the ability to use their controllers to their maximum potential and get players off of the couch, in order to burn calories in a fun and exhilarating way. Both companies have plans to release games that will have you fighting, skating, dodging, practicing archery, and dancing. Unfortunately, games like this don’t hold the attention of serious gamers, for too long, since they really have no substance. What I see attracting and continuously satisfying the gaming community is a game with a good storyline, a solid plot, adventure, action, and all the other necessary ingredients needed to escape the daily grind, achieve a sense of accomplishment, or to simply cut loose and have a great time.

So, until Sony or Microsoft show me a game that is designed to maximize the potential of their new controllers AND appeals to the serious gamer, I will be hesitant to jump on either one of their corporate bandwagons. I can already see people rushing to the nearest retail outlet, though, to outfit their PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 with what may soon become a dust-collecting paper weight. Until Sony and Microsoft ensure that both their consoles and the game lineup appeal to their core customers, the avid gamers, the release of these two amazing products will not constitute the dawn of a new day in gaming. It could be like any other fad that passes as quickly as it arrived.

On a positive note, though, being able to purchase these new devices and have them be compatible with existing consoles is a definite plus. For those who have a family video game night or use their console to entertain party guests, the new devices from Sony and Microsoft will provide a novel, new way to enjoy the event. Plus, on the bright side, I won’t have to go out and buy a Wii…at least for now, anyway.