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Sports, Shooter, Family Games 'Critical' For PS3 Motion Control Success
by Kris Graft [PC, Console/PC]
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December 16, 2009
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Sony has yet to officially attach a name to its PlayStation 3 motion controller, but Sony Computer Entertainment America hardware marketing director John Koller is already foreshadowing where the upcoming peripheral needs to succeed.
"In terms of the best types of games, I'd say that right now we're looking a real wide variety of genres that can utilize the technology," he said in an interview with GamePro. "I think the areas that are going to be really critical to our success will be family games, as well as shooters and sports games."
Sony revealed its motion controller in June during E3. The system consists of a wand-like controller topped by a color-changing sphere, and a TV-mounted camera that measures the size of the sphere continually, in order to interpret movement in a 3D space. The controller is expected to launch sometime next year.
Kollar, predictably, is confident that Sony's motion solution has the upper hand against the competing Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's Project Natal. "[Shooters, family, and sports] are going to be the areas that will really define success, because they're areas that quite honestly, I think Project Natal and the Wii are going to have trouble matching, from a differentiation standpoint," he said.
Sony has also said that it intends to focus on the core gamer market with its motion controller, as opposed to the Wii and Natal's primary approach, which is creating games for the mass market that use motion control as the foundation. But this doesn't mean that Sony will be ignoring the accessibility factor that can draw in new gamers who are intimidated by traditional game controllers.
"We look at motion control as being that much more than what exists on the market. The Holy Grail of gaming is placing you as a consumer into the game physically. When we provide further details, people will see exactly where we're going, not only from a technological standpoint on the hardware, but also where the gameplay is transitioning. It's going to be a really exciting launch," Koller said.
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Just to ramble, I ended up buying a better sensor bar, a larger one for my Wii, because the default one was too small and weak -- It worked fine for my tiny TV, but not my larger set. Nintendo should really offer a better option out of the box.
Also, why are developers ignoring the PS3's mouse option -- besides couch gamers might not like it? It's still by far the best input for shooters. Even Sony's own dev seemed to have forgotten about it, when he mentioned now RTSs would be possible on a console -- also ignoring the fact that the Wiimote can point.
"I think the areas that are going to be really critical to our success will be family games, as well as shooters and sports games. Those are going to be the areas that will really define success, because they're areas that quite honestly, I think Project Natal and the Wii are going to have trouble matching, from a differentiation standpoint."
I really hope he didn't mean to include family games in the areas that Wii will have trouble matching, lol. That would be a claim of Kutagari proportions.
I agree with the mouse and keyboard input. I really do wish Sony had the funds to build a larger 1st party showing because in my opinion they have the best and most diverse 1st party /2nd party line up. 3rd parties may not be as willing to support inputs that are xclusive to a single system, especially one that has the smallest market share.
Sony has shown that they are willing to take risk (sometimes too often) to try something new and often times it is the lack of support that kills their initiatives. The PSEye and mouse inputs all work really well but with no outside support they are dead in the water and I would hate to see that happen to this controller as well. Even if Sony could build a good mouse and keyboard RTS, a well made mouse and keyboard FPS, and amazing motion controlled games, they also really need the marketing dollars to sell them.