Both Microsoft and Sony have upcoming add-ons for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 that will allow for Wii-styled gesture gameplay. How will this impact Nintendo’s predominance in the console wars? Will these new control systems be better than the Wii, or not as good? Will gesture gameplay combined with superior graphics make the Wii seem like an inconsequential toy, or will the extra cost for these add-ons convince people to stick with the Wii for motion-sensitive games. Will game developers come up with more interesting movement ideas now that there are more platforms to develop for, or will this just create the number of cheap mini-game collections and exercise games?
I have absolutely no idea.
I haven’t seen a live demo of either Microsoft’s Kinect (formerly known as Project Natal) or Sony’s Playstation Move, so I have no way to compare them with the Wii. But I have been reading up on the subject, and here is what I learned.
Kinect
Part camera, part infrared project and part microphone array, Kinect allows players to use their own bodies as controllers. You hold nothing in your hand, you move your body and Kinect reads those movements. It is said to work in any lighting, can track multiple bodies in front of it (useful in multiplayer) and will have facial and voice recognition capabilities. If your hand is close enough to the device, it is claimed, it can track individual fingers. It will cost $150.
The buzz on Kinect started out rapturous. While a device that lets you control a game through movement sounds a lot like Sony’s EyeToy camera, Microsoft touts Kinect as a far more sophisticated collection of sensors that will not be stumped by poor lighting and busy backgrounds the way the EyeToy was.
At first, the press agreed wholeheartedly. Everyone who has tried Kinect came away raving along the lines of, “it’s true, it works perfectly, I was blown away.” Of course, demos controlled by developers often seem wildly impressive, and one suspects Microsoft has been very careful to show nothing in demos that pushes Kinect to its limits, but all reports are that Kinect pretty much blows the Wii out of the water.
The original Project Natal demoed last year at E3 is said to be slightly better than the Kinect that will coming out this year. To keep the price down, some functions originally handled by the hardware will now be handled by Xbox 360 software, which could hamper performance. Critics have also reported a noticeable lag (although if it’s no worse than the slight lag on the Wii then I won’t mind it). And the lack of a controller may limit the sorts of games you could design for Kinect; a site devoted to gesture gaming points out that there is no obvious way to let players cause an avatar to walk forward and backward. But in spite of these criticisms, Kinect is apparently a very impressive piece of technology.
Playstation Move
Kind of an EyeToy plus, Move uses a camera to track a controller with a light on the end (it looks like an alien device from a cheesy 1950s Science Fiction movie). Sensors inside the controller let the PS3 keep track of its whereabouts and orientation even when it’s not visible to the camera. There is also a PS3 version of the nunchuk, although unlike the Wii nunchuk, this one has no motion-sensing abilities. It is also not tethered to the remote, instead being wireless. The cost is predicted to be about $100, or less if you already have an EyeToy camera. The current rumor is it will be released in September.
Sony’s Move controller has received less attention than Kinect. Partly this is because it sounds a lot like a Wii knock-off, and partly this is because Sony’s history with gesture control is underwhelming. The EyeToy never worked as well as promised, and the PS3 controller has some gesture reading hardware that is rarely used for anything worthwhile.
So far though, reports are that the Playstation Move is more accurate than the Wii controller, even with the MotionPlus add-on, and while it has not received the same sort of drool-soaked praise as Kinect, it has been very well received.
Possible Outcomes
So what happens when these two products are released? My guess is the Playstation Move will have a somewhat slow start. A lot of people who own a PS3 or 360 also own a Wii, and they are unlikely to get Move until they’re sure they’re going to get something from it they don’t already have. Those who don’t own a Wii may just think gesture gaming is a bad idea to begin with.
Early adopters will jump on the new gizmo, but after that it is going to depend on press reviews and what sort of games offer Move support. Sony does seeming to be aiming to impress core gamers right away; one game currently being demoed with the Move is SOCOM 4. With good reviews and enough Move-enabled games, the device will sell consistently and do quite well, but Sony has to really prove itself after previous gesture-gaming missteps.
My original thought was that Kinect would far outsell the Move at launch, but that was when I thought it would sell for under $100 and before the press at this year's for both Move and Kinect E3 became more critical. While the press is still enthusiastic about the technology, they're not so impressed with Microsoft's plans for it; a writer for PCWorld found the games too simple, saying it might be great for his wife or for families but that he had no interest in it. The case for Kinect's success was also hurt by an ex-Microsoft studio manager who predicted it would fail. I have begun to wonder if, in spite of the impressive technology of both systems, these products may, like the EyeToy before them, fail because they aren't an integral part of the console, and will therefore not be supported in most games.
The difficulty for both Kinect and Move are that they need to be more than the Wii. A gesture-driven tennis game with better graphics is still just a tennis game, and reports out of E3 suggest that both Sony and Microsoft are focused on giving players a slightly better version of the Wii experience at a higher cost.
