Tuesday, June 09, 2009

our motion-control future

In response to Pete's article here:

I bet Sony and Microsoft will have more quality motion-control games than Nintendo within a year or so of releasing their new systems.

It has nothing to do with the motion control. Nintendo's game libraries have shrunk with each generation, and each library has had a worse ratio of great games to mediocre ones. Microsoft, on the other hand, has attracted many quality games for the 360 and has many more on the way. Sony took a while to get going, but the PS3's got a lot of quality stuff coming out as well. The Wii has some great games, but the other companies are attracting more quality design, for whatever reason.

The Milo demonstration was heavily scripted and controlled, but Molyneux has said that Milo wasn't just made for E3. That's a part of Lionhead's full game project, and Molyneux demonstrated with Fable 2 that he's learned to control expectations. Not all of that demo will show up as true gameplay, I'm sure, but Molyneux seems to believe that most of it is representative of his future game's honest potential.

The two most important parts of Molyneux's demonstration were when the player reaches down to catch what Milo throws (I have no doubt most people would reach down) and the passing of the paper from the player to the virtual character.

Project Natal is brilliant and has enormous potential. EA will be able to pump out a dozen fun mini-games, ala Wii Sports, in the first year. If they made an air hockey game, a fitness game, and a fighting game, people will buy 360s just for that. Yes, dueling with a lightsaber with nothing in your hand would feel weird, but no more so than having just the short Sony or Nintendo controller in your hand -- and Natal could allow you to grab any stick-shaped object from your house, or include a styrofoam saber, to complete the experience.

Sony's system also blows the Wii away. As I've said before, all they have to do is make one action-RPG using the sword and archery combat from their demo and I would go into debt to buy a PS3... as would hundreds, if not thousands, of other gamers. People who don't normally game would buy a PS3 for that, and similar experiences. The fast-tracking and accuracy is great, and Sony has enough quality-focused developers in affiliation to produce many good motion control games.

November of next year at the earliest, perhaps summer of 2011, gaming will be taken to a whole new level.

1 comment:

  1. I think you are right. Nintendo has gotten lazy. They need a kick in the pants from the competition. And if Microsoft soars to greatness or Sony, great. good for them. We'll see about the awesome games. Micorsoft already has the tried and testedx online infrastructure that the other two Japanese companies are still trying to catch up to. Sony had tons of software partners who have since decided to cozy up to the other two companies a bit. We'll see what happens.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.