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Sony Unveils PS3 Motion Controller
Sony confirmed rumors at E3 yesterday by debuting their take on a motion-based input device, set to be released for use with the PS3 in the spring of 2010. The BBC has some entertaining video of the demonstration. "A sensor sits on top of the TV and detects the position, distance and movement of two controllers held in a user's hand. The device can not only measure where the controllers are in relation to each other, but also how close they are to the sensor, meaning you can create true 3D movement within a game. ... During the demonstration, the developers showed what the Sony PlayStation Controller was capable of, enabling users to wield weapons, fire a bow and arrow, write on screen and manipulate objects in a virtual environment. 'One thing that is really difficult to do in a virtual world is drawing,' said Mr Marks. 'And in particular, writing requires extreme precision. [The controller can be measured] to sub-millimetre accuracy.'"
I'd rather have a real bow and arrow.
Not because they're a terrible idea.... Mostly because they're all patented. If one vendor's system "wins", we all lose.
Without competition, there are no price wars.. There's no innovation.. You're lucky if there are even incremental upgrades.
Patents don't prevent competition. You're confused.
Unfair licensing practises prevent competition.
Patenting actual hardware device innovations shouldn't be up for debate, its almost always a good thing for innovation. The problem is not licensing patents to competitors at fair rates.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
It's sad that Nintendo pioneered it - and moreso because the Wiimote is such a mediocre solution.
Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up. It works well enough for "big" movements - basic tennis swing, big golf swing, bat swing, etc - but for the "fine" motions, such as imparting "spin" to the tennis ball or trying to make a putt, the controller is Simply. Not. Sensitive. Enough.
As the tech matures, it'll get better - but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough.
Just by using the phrase "all these motion controllers" implies that there are already several different ones competing. And if systems are trying to "win" then, well - that's because they're in competition with each other.
Assuming it works as well as they claim, this already demonstrates innovation and improvement over the Wiimote, against whom they are competing.
But then isn't the easiest way to solve that to just do away with patents on input devices?
Am I the only one who was glad that "waggle" games were segmented to the Wii? Don't get me wrong, the games on wii that use waggle well are fun games and all, but for every game that uses it well, there are 50 that abuse it/don't understand it.
Mouse and keyboard will STILL be better and more accurate for FPS games, and dual analogue sticks will still be better for platformers. I can see these controllers being pretty good for DS type games, using your TV like a touchscreen, even a 3d touchscreen (some sort of 3d maze game, where you have to drag a ball through a 3d maze). Otherwise, I still prefer existing control options...
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Good enough by what standards? Mate, they rule the market. What more could they have wanted from a box that actually rakes in cash instead of costing the company hard $?
How many years is the Wii old now? And only now do Sony and Microsoft emerge with their own 'innovative' controller technology. How many billions of dollars is Nintendo ahead of them at this point?
Be glad. If anything, this will push Nintendo to come up with something even better. That can only be good for us gamers, right?
Both systems need accelerometers + gyros to sense the controller rotation (X & Y absolute, Z relative).
The Wii uses a camera on the remote and targets in the sensor bar to detect position and Z-rotation (absolute).
The PS3 thingy uses a camera on the TV and a target on the controller to detect position. I don't know how it detects Z-rotation (absolute); maybe it uses a magnetometer?
The PS3 can track position better because the Eye can see the controller most of the time. The Wii tracks better when the controller is pointed at the screen.
The graphics are killer. The AI has me pinned down. The story is immersive. If only I could freehand draw some genitalia on the wall this game would be perfect.
The player has to inject the obligatory rootkit implant into their body upon first use.
I would give up the motion controller and the eye toy for a PS3 pricecut.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
They're also competing against Microsoft, who's technology easily looks the most impressive ( even with my I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it glasses on. )
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/
Yes, Nintendo's patent on the Wii Remote stopped Sony from releasing a wand-shaped motion controller after all.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Wasn't their Eye peripheral supposed to do that already?
Because I remember Sony dissing the Wii controller every which way when Nintendo presented it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I'm not confused. Let me fix your comment.
No sane console vendor would license a patented killer feature to the competition at any price.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be able to patent this stuff. It wasn't an anti-patent rant... It's more of a lament of where gameplay innovation has gone to. Novel input methods aren't born in the arcade and then licensed for home use anymore. They're cooked up by the console makers as a bludgeon to kill off competition.
Nintendo didn't pioneer it. They had the first successful implementation.
Wow, you actually used the "I could care less" phrase correctly. You actually care enough about motion controllers to gripe about the Wii remote, so yes you're right. You could care less.
Also, expect it to be full of DRM so you can't make your own.
I don't think that term means what you think it does. DRM has to do with restrictions on the copying and playback of digital media files. What exactly does that have to do with a gaming controller?
I can't wait...
They're cooked up by the console makers as a bludgeon to kill off competition.
Isn't trying to beat their competition precisely what corporations should be doing? This isn't a special olympics race where everyone ends up winning regardless of how you badly you do.
Yep. The PowerGlove.
"As the tech matures, it'll get better - but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough."
And Microsoft and Sony years latter coming up with a motion controller are admitting that Nintendo got it right.
This and Microsoft's look cool but will they work with four players at once? How many games will use it since it is an add on? And how much?
Sony's solution requires not just the wand but also an eyetoy.
Hey it may be really cool but as everyone else will say it is just Sony and Microsoft playing catch up.
And why is it sad that Nintendo pioneered it? You own stock in Sony or something? Nintendo earned there success by making a product more people wanted. No differn't that what Sony did with the PlayStation1.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Microsoft and Sony's new technologies are just appearing, halfway through the product life cycle. This means they'll be, what, 3 good games using this hardware. Just look at headsets. Sony didn't include one and so many games don't support such a fundamentally important piece of online play. This'll wind up in the dumpster next to the Playstation Eye and other such technologies.
I am starting to find that there is some sort of implied shame for most people in liking what Nintendo does. I hear the "it's a kids toy", like somehow a game/system that kids can play can't be any fun for adults. I know quite a few people I had to drag, kicking and screaming, to play a game on the Wii with me. They almost ALWAYS enjoy themselves. But more often than not, they flat out REFUSE to admit they enjoyed themselves and start bitching about the controller shape or the shell color or just about anything to convince themselves that they hate the system.
Same thing happens with Flash games, but at least there I can see it as a hate for the Flash platform bleeding into the objectionability. As for Wii hate, I have no idea where it comes from.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The controller is not incredibly precise, but this does not have to be a huge hurdle in a game. The golf game in Wii Sports may not be very good for putting, but compare and contrast with Tiger Woods '08 (not '07 which is known to be flawed, and '09 which "fixed" something that was not broken), where putting is not hard to control at all. It has some issues getting the 3/4 swing to register properly, and there is a massive rendering error on the second hole of East Lake, but putting works quite well.
Most of the shortcomings of the Wii hardware can be overcome in software. That doesn't mean a controller upgrade would be a bad thing, but it does mean the existing hardware can often be used better than it currently is.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
drawing with the wii controller is hard not because of accuracy but cos of the resolution, target size (i.e small TV) and lack of friction for stability like you'd get with paper.
His point stands on its own merits. "Good enough for making accurate movement calculations for new games" would be a good extension of the sentence though.
Nintendo's making a better motion controller. If they're making one, there's a perceived need for one. That's all.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Exactly. Without patents, Sony or Microsoft could simply sell their own Wii and be done with it.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
- Yes Wii can !
Yeah but in case you didn't notice we're talking about the rules of beating the competition, not the purpose itself. Murdering the opponent also wins the battle, but it breaks the rules (and please don't bullshit me about comparing murder to patenting, that's not the point, the point is that I have to sink so low in comparison for you to understand). 100 years ago patents nurtured the industries. Nowadays we're moving so fast in development that it's doing it nothing else than harm. There are too many versions and alternations for everything these days and by claiming one milestone you've basically killed the development it could have sprung out to, instead focusing on one or a few lines of paths that merely benefit your company. This is no secret, nor is it difficult to understand. Different rules for different eras. The internet era demands change. Change in patenting, change in copyrighting, change in "intellectual property", whatever the fuck that means, period.
I am the lawn!
I actually find the opposite is true.
Just about everyone that I talk to that has played the Wii absolutely *loved* it, no matter how much they doubted it before hand. Regardless of the WiiMotes issues (I can't play my Wii in mid afternoon... too much sunlight) it *WAS* innovative. You have to give credit to a company that has such high demand for the product that its still selling out almost 2 years after its release.
Can Sony and MS say that? Can they even say that they've made a penny on their systems?
The Wii appeals to almost every age, gender and racial demographic with its variety of fun and easy to play games, and yet has enough mature and challenging games to keep a gamer like me interested. I don't own a PS3 or an xbox360. They don't have the games I want.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
100 years ago patents nurtured the industries.
And they still are.
Isn't trying to beat their competition precisely what corporations should be doing? This isn't a special olympics race where everyone ends up winning regardless of how you badly you do.
And yet the XBox 360 lives on... I suppose it helps when you don't mind blowing $1 billion to make sure little Timmy wins.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
It doesn't feel natural to me to use a mouse to control and fire a firearm, or a sword and besides, I sit at a chair and push a mouse around all day at work (and sometimes longer) --- it's not something I want to do for leisure.
The Wii allows for interesting, natural interfaces which minimize button mashing and allow for more immersion, which for me equates to fun.
Better still, one can use various gun shells to improve the verisimilitude --- I've even been making Wii Zapper-like pistols in my wood shop and handing them out to co-workers along w/ used copies of Link's Crossbow Training so that we can all compete for high scores.
Do yourself a favour, open your mind, get your keister out of your chair, grab a Wii Zapper or other gun shell (the Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol is excellent if you have large hands) and try an FPS on a WII, e.g.:
- ranger levels in _Link's Crossbow Training_
- Quantum of Solace --- this game is quite a bit of fun, almost as good as Goldeneye
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
- Medal of Honor
- Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
- House of the Dead: Overkill
Unfortunately Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition doesn't work well w/ a standard gun shell, though GameStop makes a 2-button one which does work w/ it.
A game which almost makes it is the prosaically named Ski and Shoot (a biathlon game) which also supports the Wii Balance Board --- I'd really like to see an FPS which did this well.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
He surely want to make a dick out of this... PronPower! Nothing is better than fapping online with friends!
I can't call that English
Really, I'm asking in all seriousness. The things that were presented in E3 seemed as gimmicky as when they first were thought of(u-force, etc). Almost 20 years ago we had the gimmick of "multimedia" with games having FMV sequences, and it ended up being a bunch of bad Sega CD games.
Then I thought of the video game crash(no more Atari, Coleco, Intelly, etc) and what good came out of it: a revamped market that wasn't the same ol same ol. A cleansing with fire.
I remember the "pop the bubbles" game that came free with a webcam. Amusing for roughly 5 minutes. Sony's wand seems like they are just trying to catch up to the Wii, but it's too late.
What planet are you from? It seems if Nintendo came up with a new suppository add-on for the wiimote people would be falling over each other saying how great it was. Even when Nintendo was in third place in the last gen, people would moan how great it was compared to others.
It is great that Nintendo has come up with a new controller and provides a cheap console for the masses. But to expect everyone to love it because you do isn't realistic. For me, it really doesn't have the games I am interested in. Most of my friends who have it don't touch it any more. Some people just aren't going to get it...and it shouldn't diminish your enjoyment of it just because others don't care for it.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Don't underestimate the value of the original. Sony or MS would sell a "Wii", but they couldn't call it a Wii due to trademarks, and they wouldn't be able to do a lot of the same design things, due to copyright (which is way too long as it is, but still a useful concept if done right). They could have a knock-off that does the same things, but they couldn't ever have a Wii. And people wouldn't want the knock-off by and large, they'd want the original, which is guaranteed to be compatible, and is the only one that'll get the game and system updates from Nintendo.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Sad because of two things:
#1 - the immense amount of pure shovelware out on the Wii currently (face it, the Wii itself may sell well, but
#2 - Because I'm old enough to remember how Big N acts when they are "on top" of the market - how they threw their weight around, forced great games to languish being unable to produce enough copies to sell, forced companies to only sell so many titles per year (leading to the fact that most developers had 3-4 sham companies set up to get around it), how they censored and screwed with games so badly that nobody wanted the US release of certain titles and we missed out on half the early Final Fantasy lineup...
I believe that the video displayed earlier was only a tech demo, as in pre-recorded. Otherwise it has a horribly slow reaction time to movements... sometimes 2-3 seconds later, the character would move. When the 360's product comes out, or an actual demonstration occurs, I will be MUCH more interested.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
I suspect the reason for your dislike of the Wii is simply your approach to gaming. I imagine you sit down and play a game for 2+ hours with some frequency (daily, every other day). I will readily admit that the Wii is not particularly well suited to that type of gameplay. It is, however, very well suited to less "serious" gameplay - an hour at a time, a couple of times a week, and "party" style gameplay, where your primary purpose is not actually playing the game, but interacting with a group of people.
I don't wholly agree with the GP, but just like there are fanboys for a particular platform (irrational support of and expenditure on a particular company's products) there are anti-fanboys (irrational distaste and malaise expressed towards a particular company's products) - call it the law of conservation of market preference. I think it's reasonable to say, also, that the size and vocality of a given anti-fanclub is as good (or perhaps even better) an indicator of the success of a product as that of its fanclub.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Considering SONY already showed stuff like that there four years ago on their E3 keynote... remember the 'bathtub with duckies, battleships and cans' tech demo? Certainly not, I suppose. Go watch it!
I was just responding with the same level of evidence that you had: none. The many companies who use their patents to protect themselves from having their ideas stolen would beg to differ that patents don't nurture their business.
In other news, the PS3 is soon to be renamed the P S Thwii.
It didn't stop Sony and their army of lawyers but what about a smaller shop who comes up with a good idea that happens to involve motion control? Nintendo and/or Sony and/or Microsoft will litigate that competition out of business.
Maybe things have changed a little bit now that people are more willing to accept buying add-on peripherals for their console now that Nintendo has made the idea more popular, but I don't think that this will help sell additional consoles for Sony or have any major content released for it.
Microsoft has much the same problem, even though I think that the technology is amazing. Their core audience probably couldn't care less about the device and generally prefer using console controls to play their games. Because it's an add-on, most companies will not target the device because it has no install base and few people will buy one because there are no killer apps for it. Notice the vicious circle here. I'm honestly surprised that the balance board for the Wii has sold even half as much as it has.
If Microsoft really wants to push this technology their next console should include this by default and there should be a stripped down version sold at a mass market price so that people outside of hardcore gamer group will buy the console. Sony really needs to do the same as well if it wants to cash in on the casual gaming crowd. However, what they've done now is too late as the casual gamer boat has already set sail. Of course, it may be another two years before either Microsoft or Sony can release a new console. Microsoft supposedly just started to break even recently and has a lot of losses to eat up whereas Sony might not even be at the break-even point from what I've heard.
"(The controller can be measured) to sub-millimeter accuracy."
Big deal. Get a good enough caliper and you can measure any old NES controller to sub-millimeter accuracy, too.
Bow-ties are cool.
You don't play with many "gamers" then. It's the people who identify themselves as "hardcore" that dislike the Wii, or find reasons to dislike it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Why don't you ask GameTrak, who are manufacturing and selling their own wand-shaped motion controller for the Xbox 360 and PS3?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up.
You "knew they'd screwed up"? Really? Because the control setup of Golf and Tennis games on the PS3 were a better arrangement? Something they had really 'gotten right'?
but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough.
Bottom line, if the original hadn't been 'good enough', there wouldn't be a motion plus, or copy-cat technology from Microsoft and Nintendo.
I guess I should probably avoid mentioning that Sony has made FAR more revisions to their PS3 hardware over the last two years than Nintendo... also a tacit admission that they completely screwed it up? And now with the announcement of this new controller they are admitting that even the fundamental controller they went with wasn't good enough?
Yes they are improving it, yes, Sony and Microsoft are both stepping up with their own innovations. And, yes, all of these motion controller systems will be be replaced with even better tech a couple years down the road.
Calling the Wii Remote not 'good enough' and saying Nintendo 'screwed it up' is just sour grapes.
In your willingness to wallow in negativity you seem to be omitting the vast, and more probable, range of opportunity between the two extremes of "all these motion controllers fail horribly" and "one vendor's system "wins""
Clearly this controller puts the PS3 in competition against the Wii in terms of motion control. Nintendo will undoubtedly respond with a higher specced Wii. Innovation. Competition. Everyone gets better hardware. Everyone wins.
Did you notice how he kept missing the ball?
He can control where the bat is in space, but he has absolutely no idea where it is relative to the ball. This may work in combination with 3D TV, but even that will have calibration problems.
Sony's controller has knows it's absolute position, and the Wii knows it's relative position. The question is, when would you need to know a controllers absolute position?
[Intentionally left blank]
I thought they also had this on the PS2
It will be really interesting to see motion capture games play out between Microsoft and Sony, sony's tech seems slightly more acccurate but microsofts motion capture was said to be down to fingers, which seems accurate enough for drawing.
Microsoft's tech has no controls but Sony's may work better in real world conditions, or when used with a projector (microsoft's camera may not be able to discern the user as well with stray ir from a projector bulb backlighting a player)
Both honestly seem like sideshows to the main point of each console, some way to slow down the Wii... In the end it will all come down to games to make or break the tech on each console.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are a lot of games that don't get ported to the Wii because they are designed around a classic controller instead of a wiimote. With all three systems having a similar control system now, I'll bet we see more cross platform games come to the Wii that intelligently use the wiimote instead of having it tacked on or simply not made at all.
Yeah, agreed, but until these motion controls give me a way to turn 90 or 180, or 75 in the same amount of time and accuracy like a mouse does, I'll settle for control over natural feel. This controller doesn't seem to get there either. I mean, it's closer than the Wii controller, but if you watch the videos, the kid can't hit a ball with a racket, has trouble shooting a giant sword lying on the floor with a gun, and has trouble aiming the bow when asked to shoot a specific enemy.
Motion controls will be intuitive and natural one day, but I still don't think this is it.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I think that Rick Marks fellow has one of those PhDs. See EyeToy entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_Toy
s/Mr/Dr/g
Did anyone else start laughing like a 14 year old boy when they read that?
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Well every console that is popular eventual ends up with a large amount of Shovelware. The PS2 is a great example of that.
Yes Nintendo was a control freak. They where because Atari lost control and that was one of the reasons that the Videogame market went bust way back when. The Atari was so popular that everybody flooded the market with really terrible games. There where some gems but most where just trash. Of course Atari released one of the biggest stinkers of all time with ET.
And frankly Sony? Sony? Rook kit pushing, DRM loving, memory stick, Blu-Ray pushing, buy your movies again on UMD, no Sony movies on NetFlix streaming SONY????
I will take big N thank you than give even more power to Sony.
You hold a grudge over Nintendo being too controlling in the past but you like Sony?
But hey I do like my PS2 and there are lot of games for it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Historically speaking, the more likely scenario is that Sony gets sued, removes the feature from the next generation system while telling everybody that it is a stupid feature anyway, and finally relents and is forced to pay overly high royalties to remain competitive.
As for Wii hate, I have no idea where it comes from.
I've come across several people displaying a peculiar hatred for the platform, but one of them caught my attention in particular: basically, he was blaming Nintendo for not making a console that sports HD. When I started to talk about his console (the guy owned an Xbox 360) and how it neither supported HD sound, nor supported HD optical media, he just said it was fine by his standards. Hypocritical, I know.
This had me thinking that some people became infatuated with the HD trend (only on the visual side, of course) and started hating the Wii for this very reason.
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Whoa! Mr. President, we don't use the term "special olympics" anymore.
Sure. It's what they should be doing.
Explain to me why, if they succeed, we should like it again?
Regardless, in the past console makers were competing at making home gaming affordable while keeping it as arcade-like as possible. They've transitioned into creating the best mold into which the next batch of entertainment will be poured. There's plenty of room for them to compete at giving us the most gaming power for the dollar. There's no need for us to end up having whole genres of games that can only be played on "System Y" just because there is an input device patent.
That Microsoft's presentation looks lame in comparison. That is it looks lame if you have Silverlight.
Or you look it up on YouTube.
Why does it look lame?
Because they are trying to go the controllerless path.
Aaaand... it is kinda predetermined to fail unless you can manage to capture the movement of every single unmarked finger.
Like when you want to shoot the weapon, change weapon or tool, reload, use inventory/menu or interact with the surrounding without yelling...
You know... All that stuff that makes us the cool top of the food chain.
Plus, they come of as trying to hard to just control the "beast. The painting demo looks like something painted using only your left foot while hanging upside down.
And the fact that the guy doing it is so out of shape that he is grunting while he does it does not help.
Come on! Couldn't they have found another physically active girl to do that while he talks?
And the orange guy just looks like a prick you would like to introduce to the bottom of your shoe.
Note also that even in the commercial (featuring yet nonexistent games/entertainment/communication software) all interaction is limited to very crude body gestures for moving a rag-doll on the screen, activation of very specific predetermined switches through very predetermined gestures (hitting the buzzer or changing the tire).
And yelling at the screen.
Using the camera for texture and object input is a nice feature though.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's sad that Nintendo pioneered it - and moreso because the Wiimote is such a mediocre solution.
I have no idea what that sentence minus the "moreso" part is supposed to mean. Somebody had to be the first to make a functional and mainstream motion sensing controller. As usual, Nintendo was there to make controller innovation happen. Why's that sad? Would it not be sad if Microsoft had done it? Why?
Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up. It works well enough for "big" movements - basic tennis swing, big golf swing, bat swing, etc - but for the "fine" motions, such as imparting "spin" to the tennis ball or trying to make a putt, the controller is Simply. Not. Sensitive. Enough.
Did it ever occur to you that it was just those games? That you weren't meant to be able to impart finely granular levels of spin to the ball in Wii Tennis? It works great in Trauma Center and Elebits for fine motions.
As the tech matures, it'll get better - but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough.
Admitting it wasn't good enough, or admitting that it could be better and that better is good? It's awesome how the Nintendo haters have retro-actively given the Wii the status of automatic success, instead of extremely risky proposition like they were happy to call it before its launch. Keeping the cost of controllers down was important, making something like the Wiimote at the time wasn't easy, and now that the technology has become cheaper and better, they take advantage of that. I'm not seeing the crime here.
The enemies of Democracy are
When I asked about the Wii version of "Okami," a game that uses drawing as a magic system, a store clerk claimed that it was flawed because the drawing didn't work well compared to the PS2 version! If the Wii controller is actually inferior for that purpose to a regular controller, it seems like it doesn't do what it was meant to do, and is basically just Power Glove II. Has anyone played both versions of the game for comparison?
Revive the Constitution.
I agree that the wiimote is a pretty mediocre solution. However, I have a hard time faulting it because it gets the job done most of the time. Call of Duty and Metroid seemed to be able to get the "gun pointed at screen" mechanic working fairly well, Wii Sports is immensely fun in spite of the sometimes frustrating controls, and there are a lot of games that make good use of the motion sensitivity. Compare that to the sixaxis, where they absolutely did it wrong, or other motion control systems where the motion sensor is too sensitive or has weird glitches that cause the system to mess up unless you're trained to use it.
In other words, the mediocrity of the controller keeps it from being a massive failure, which allowed them to gain market position and push a technology that nobody else had successfully pushed for gaming. I believe they absolutely made the right choice, and they're incrementally improving it now that some of the basics are in place. I don't know if they could have been successful making a more sensitive control scheme, but I do know that there were a lot of pitfalls down that path that they neatly avoided.
well, hints are based on how the system is set up.
The controller has a purple lighted tip that the eye toy locks onto and tracks.
This is giving way to the system's new name: The purple-helmeted warrior.
They're using their grammar skills there.
What happened to head tracking? They demoed it a year ago http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/27/ps3-head-tracking-only-needs-camera/ - however TFA doesn't even mention it. A pity, it would have been a killer feature...
"A senior sits on top of the TV and detects the position, distance and movement of two controllers held in a user's hand..."
My first thought was to picture an elderly person sitting on top of my TV.
E3 Tech Demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXYSAcXpCnM
360 commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACt9R9z37U
Note that the gestures are very crude - because they were trying to eliminate any kind of controller.
Now, if they had used multicolored rings (or just duct tape, stickers, whatever...) - we would have the "finger level" capture too.
This way though, it is a very limited set of games you can play.
Even something like bowling becomes a problem.
Sure you can swing the bowling ball, but how do you release it? Wave your other hand in the air? Doesn't seem like bowling to me.
You could play golf though. And tennis.
And anything else where the game sends towards you an object with which you can interact in one of the three ways. Catch, hit, pass.
Throwing? Sorry... no buttons or switches.
Shooting? That won't work either.
Gripping and/or holding? Both hands only.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There is something to be said for a "mediocre" solution that no one else had thought to use and yet proved wildly successful.
Its called good design or elegant design.
In other words, Nintendo used what they NEEDED for a game control system and cut costs so that more people could play, and proved that the formula worked.
I watched the video (both of them), but how is Natal's more impressive or less of a tech demo than Sony's? I have GOT to be missing something.
The one thing I want to know is how much lag? There is plenty of software out there doing basically what Natal is doing, with PC webcams. None that I have seen have low latency, or a high degree of accuracy. I did not get the impression they've improved on that, but we wont know until they give a live demo.
Sony GAVE a live demo, and it had extremely low latency. Why is everyone saying Sony's was more of a tech demo. WTF did I miss? If you have more Natal videos, PLEASE send them my way, I'm really curious what the hell everyone sees in this.
We've got advanced image recognition on one hand, and that is neat, but motion capture on the other. I'd bet on motion capture. Which will be easier to develop for, and integrate into a game? How will the environment affect either solution? We have much, much more reason to be wary of image recognition failing in poor lighting than motion capture.
Within the company there are departments that I like, and departments that I prefer to avoid.. when it comes to Sony or any company in fact, there are probably parts to like and parts to avoid. With Sony I like their games consoles, TVs and I liked the AIBO - everything else I'm not so fussed about.
The PS 1 and 2 may have had a lot of crap games, but they also had many, many good games. With my PS3 I must have spent far more time using it as a PVR and media player than as a games console.. but I still have some great games for it and hope that someone will use this motion controller setup to finally make some decent action game controls - I WANT MY LIGHTSABRE DUELS!! And I don't mean with a similarly crappy control system to Red Steel, I mean full motion sensing controls where I have to learn and use proper sword fighting techniques to win on the harder difficulties in a similar way that I had to practice my drumming for a couple of months before I fully completed Rock Band on expert.
which is totally what she said
Patenting actual hardware device innovations shouldn't be up for debate
Well, it seems like it depends on what level those things are patented. Are you patenting the specific design of that hardware, or are you trying to apply the patent to "all hardware controllers that accomplish [x]"? Because I don't mind it so much when the patent is of a particular design or mechanism that's truly novel, leaving the door open for someone else to design their own mechanism and implementation to achieve the same results. What's troublesome is that a lot of times companies are patenting big general ideas.
Actually I also thought they screwed up the Wii Sports Golf, but I knew that it was probably the software rather than the hardware, because the rest of the Wii Sports games all have pretty good controls IMO.
which is totally what she said
The Wii was succesful not because of the technology, but because they managed to draw in a huge untapped market, the non-gamer.
A friend of mine in the game industry had always talked about the next big video game crash. With the 'gamer' market being the primary one it started to become increasingly expensive to create games and consoles. Gamers kept demanding better and better graphics and more powerful systems. Those who couldn't afford the millions to create such a game were left behind and those that could were becoming increasingly scared to try new things. With such a large cost:market ratio it was safer to release sequels or add-ons to already proven successes. Eventually the gamer crowd was destined to demand more than what was profitable. The videogame industry would have two choices, either reduce the cost of producing titles or increase the market.
Nintendo did both. (Although I would think it would be tough to do either one individually). They turned a broken business model into a smart and profitable one. The wiimote had little to do with it. It was merely just a tool to reach out to that huge untapped market.
Come on, how hard can it be? The sequel to The Force Unleashed would rock my universe if I could actually strangle my foes.
Stop the brainwash
I suppose I meant small cost:market ratio
I don't want to troll...but strictly speaking, it is. Car-related deaths implies death by car. No car means no way to die by car. Granted, the side-effects are incredibly complicated and probably not worth getting rid of cars, but if you're only interested in minimizing car-related deaths, then get rid of the cars.
Cynical Idealist
The six-axis controller is fine as long as you don't expect it to be another Wii-mote. It works well in games like LittleBigPlanet, fl0w and Flower. Some games still work better on a controller with a lot of buttons, and motion sensing is a nice option to be able to enable if you want to use it. Most of the time I don't, but flow and flower were both designed with the sensor in mind and work very well. As for LittleBigPlanet, well if you've played it you'll understand how it's just a nice extra to have :)
which is totally what she said
Yeah, it was my impression that Microsoft's demonstration was more like, "We have this concept, and kind of have something that sort of works, but it's not really a product yet." Sony's is more like, "Here's a product that we'll be launching soon."
Second for Mario Kart with the motion sensor. I started on it that way, and have stuck with it since. I can get precision turns with the complimentary intuitiveness of steering. Mario Kart seems to be the most refined implementation of a driving game for Wii using motion sensors - Nintendo did their homework very well.
Then again, I'm probably one of very few who plays Geometry Wars with the pointer. Personally, I like how it works over standard analog controls, I just feel it's more accurate.
I think many people try the motion control, get fed up after a few minutes, and revert to what they've been used to for decades. From presonal observation, it seems like they just don't want to take the time to learn it - they just want to play.
Prove it.
It's sad that Nintendo pioneered it
Nintendo 'pioneered' motion sensitive/IR tracking controllers in the same way that Apple 'pioneered' portable HDD mp3 players: They just had better marketing.
Eye Toy on PS2 was different, because the PS2 wasn't capable of estimating the distance of an object the camera sent to it. The first games only used the player as an obstacle, for example. Similar to the stuff Wario Ware does on the DSi. Later games (like that skateboarding game) tried to identify the position of certain body parts, similar to what Project Natal is doing.
The PS3, on the other hand, could estimate the position of an object, probably by its size and stuff and therefore enable that tech guy to do those 3D manipulations shown in that 2005 demo. It was pretty rudimentary stuff back then, but it kinda worked fairly well and whithout any fancy ultrasound Z positioning Project Natal uses IIRC.
Wii games are harder than xbox games. Most xbox games you can start learn and complete in one sitting. Though across the board games are easier than they used to be. PC and PS3 games are the only ones that provide any challenge and the ones that do are usually from Japan. Makes me wonder about the US gaming population or more likely the companies perception of the US market.
The Sony demo, to me, doesn't look like much of an advancement ( over Wii, and even over Adobe Flash demos around the web ), whereas the Microsoft complete lack of controller seems a large step forwards. Even if it's only basic recognition of body movement the possibilities for it seem virtually endless, to me, the magic wand is just a point and a direction vector in 3d space.
I think people are saying that Sony's is more of a tech demo based on the amount of *gloss* applied to the presentation, MS's looks finished, Sony's looks in development. ( I think in reality it's probably the other way around, MS seem to still have latency problems. )
More infos :
This is a link to Johnny Chung Lee's ( the guy who did super interesting things with the Wiimote, they're worth checking out too ) blog discussing the technology, including why light conditions aren't important. He *raves* and he's personally made some of the most impressive spacial/visual/cheap technology I've ever seen. He seems to work for Microsoft now, normal rules apply...
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/
The biggest difference to me is that if both products reach the consumer as advertised ( as if ) then the Sony product is more of the same, and will probably result in similar mini games to the Wii and the MS one is so far ahead of what I thought was possible in real time on consumer hardware ( I work in a similar-ish field ) that it's genuinely exciting.
Also, the mom in the MS video is hot. ( :
I also believe that Sony's been working on something like that to capitalize on the EyeToy a bit more than just for goofy side games, but they likely found out that it would take too much processing or be rather difficult to program around to make it relevant. I've seen many tech demos using the EyeToy as face trackers for "simulated 3D" and other things.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
He said 'successful'. Despite what you saw in "The Wizard", the PowerGlove actually kinda sucked.
Be glad. If anything, this will push Nintendo to come up with something even better. That can only be good for us gamers, right?
Sure! Like the Wii Vitality Sensor.
Unlikely.
The WiiMote is based on an IR camera inside the controller, reading the IR signals from the "Sensor" Bar.
The PS3mote is based on a colored light on the controller and motion tracking through a camera.
Whilst the Microsoft Natal is based on full body motion detection, without a remote.
For once, all three companies made something different and interesting in its own way.
^_^
It is amazing to me... Microsoft's cobbled together video was clearly done to make sure they had a response. It didn't just have a horrible reaction time... sometimes it was psychic. Watch the kid and the dinosaur... the dinosaur will start stomping before the kid does. They are out of sync and it was all clearly canned.
I bet it was simply a response to "Oh, shit, Nintendo is coming out with Wii-motion plus, Sony is going to demonstrate their new controller live, we better show off something... anything!"
"Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up."
Yea, I FIGURED that was about all you played. Go pick up a copy of DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii.
"It works well enough for "big" movements - basic tennis swing, big golf swing, bat swing, etc - but for the "fine" motions, such as imparting "spin" to the tennis ball or trying to make a putt, the controller is Simply. Not. Sensitive. Enough."
Ha. Again, DBZBK3. Much different. Also - Super Mario Galaxy. Very sensitive, indeed, have fun screwing up LOADS on the rolling ball when you don't hold your Wiimote EXACTLY VERTICAL.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Gamers have to dislike the Wii, it makes the market open and accessible to non-gamers. It's Gamer Law (or should that be lore?) you have to hate the n00bs and anything they touch gets the stigma of n00b.
Most companies quite rightly realise that the majority of the people who would like to buy entertainment in all it's various forms are not people you'd consider part of the "hardcore gamer" subculture.
The vast majority of the population want games they can pick up and play easily (eg Wii Sports, Smash Bros, Wario Warez, and most other Wii games), or plot-driven games where they an actually complete the plot without dedicating months to it.
The gaming industry is larger now that ever, but most of the new growth simply isn't targeted at hardcore gamers. I bet that the number of games that ARE targeted at hardcore gamers has actually remained relatively constant...
I think it's reasonable to say, also, that the size and vocality of a given anti-fanclub is as good (or perhaps even better) an indicator of the success of a product as that of its fanclub.
N-Gage. Virtual Boy. Phantom.
So you think more people have bought say Sony or Panasonic TVs and DVD players than knock-offs from Korea and China?
People buy cheap. If they could, they'd buy the knock-off Wii from some no-name company at Walmart for $15 less than a real one.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I love how you got rated flamebait for pointing out that in a truly fair race, the 360 would never even have been made (since its predecessor lost so much money).
Fortunately for Microsoft, their pockets are very very deep and they're able to absorb huge losses to work on prototype after prototype before eventually finding something that really works or tanking the project completely.
See Windows 1 & 2, IE (most versions), etc.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Retardball Z? No thanks.
Fine, then they should have two packages. One where you get a wand and a disc, and one where you just get the wand.
I'm not against paying for the R&D, but if I want 2 wands I shouldn't have to pay twice as much R&D. The second wand should be just the price of the parts plus some markup.
With this it is painfully obvious that the true "product" is the software running on the PS3. Why should you have to pay for that software twice just to be able to use two wands at the same time?
I'm not sure I follow you - you've listed 3 largely unsuccessful products (relative to the Wii, at least) - did they have a particularly vociferous group of detractors? What's your point?
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
If you say "Here's a Sony for $1000, and here's a El-Knockoffo for $800", most people will buy the Sony. For almost all consumers, the brand is important, often more important than the actual quality. Or are you saying that Nike has to have gone out of business years ago since there are cheap knock-offs of their product? The exact same forces would take effect for Nintendo.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The latency on Sony's input method vs what Microsoft just showed is much better. I was getting worried because a previous article showed the microsoft xbox solution had a pretty bad lag when a guy was moving his arms up and down. The microsoft video showed his arms up when they were already down. The video linked to in this article shows that there is no noticeable latency in the PS3 motion sensor. I am now excited about future games for the Sony solution.
Heh, well at least someone appreciated it! The Zune seems to fit your description as well.
:-/
Apparently someone gave the xbox / msft fanbois mod points today. Not much you can do about that.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I remember playing an EyeToy-game using a "wand controller" just before Wii came out...?
This is blinging
My impression of Wii sales is that people who buy it are sold on it at parties, where it is fun to play in a group, and then hardly touch the thing a week after buying it. The limitations do not become immediately obvious. It's good enough to sell itself on novelty value, but not good enough to sustain interest. Everyone I know who has bought one goes back to their other next-gen systems shortly after buying it, and the thing spends most of its time collecting dust.
As someone who has worked on a Wii dev kit, I can tell you that the Wii is essentially a Gamecube with some extra memory kludged in and a controller gimmick. It's a hack, with all the work shifted to the developer to overcome its limitations. I'm not surprised that it's cheap. The hardware couldn't cost more than $75 to make. But what people understood the controller to be able to do, and what it could do, were two entirely different things--it could not, as promised, register position and attitude, only motion, and even that not very well. We've seen this before with Microsoft vaporware; products touted to be far more than they are in an attempt to preempt better competitors. The fact that Nintendo got it out first as an active controller doesn't mean that the idea didn't exist before. The Eyetoy and various camera apps for PC and XBox did essentially the same thing, but used a passive controller (colored objects) with the camera, and these predate the Wii by a couple of years. First isn't best, and Nintendo wasn't even the first. What strikes me about Sony is that they plan long term, and they don't ship till its good and ready. Based on product release patterns we've seen in the industry, the Wii is already peaking, the XBox360 will peak in a year or two, but the PS3 won't hit its peak for 3 or 4 years. Given the quality of the hardware, the PS3 is the one you want in the long run.
My impression of the demonstration of Microsoft's Natal is that it's not yet ready, and may never be; at several points during the demonstration the player avatar exploded into a tangled mass of limbs. I watched and compared carefully the sensitivity of the Wii's enhanced controller vs. Sony's. I could not help noticing that in the archery demo, it took several seconds to line up a shot on a broad static target (and even then it was hard to hit) while the Sony demo allowed the player to do quickly aimed called shots on a moving mesh. Sony also performed the acid test on positional control, mapping the controlled virtual object to the player's hand flawlessly. This is something Nintendo didn't even attempt.
As for the ethics of the various companies, they're all monsters, so there really isn't one that has the clear advantage here. I will say, though, that Sony is split between its hardware and its media division, and the two are constantly at loggerheads, with Sony Hardware often subverting the malicious practices of Sony Media (I've actually seen the two go at it tooth and nail in projects I've worked on.) So the guys you hate at Sony didn't build the console.
It doesn't feel natural to me to use a mouse to control and fire a firearm, or a sword and besides, I sit at a chair and push a mouse around all day at work (and sometimes longer) --- it's not something I want to do for leisure.
And there we have it. The control mechanism needs to be suited to the game you're playing - so generally FPS games are most accurate with mouse & keyboard. Generally platformers work best with a joypad. I'd argue arcade driving games also work best with joypad. Driving simulators work best with a steering wheel with force-feedback.
Waggling some nintendo remote in mid-air doesn't feel natural to control a steering wheel either, and it's not accurate, nor realistic.
The problem isn't the controller, it's the game. Boom Blocks would be stupid with a keyboard or joypad, for example. A new control scheme requires the game producers to see it's value and design the game accordingly.
The pre-recorded trailer was indeed totally made-up - as it said in the beginning, that represented only MS' "vision" of what it would be like.
The stage show was real and live. I could see noticeable lag, around 200-500ms, but it was kinda hard to judge from that setup. I'd put more weight on an independent hands-on impression - and those guys certainly liked it. "Ever so slight control delay" sounds more encouraging, as does "Holy shit" and "it worked remarkably, incredibly well". If an experienced Burnout player liked Burnout Natal-style that much, it bodes well. And I do like the face- and voice-recognition too, adds a new dimension.
I liked the Sony demo too - plenty of gaming potential there, no question. Very precise-looking (a standard-sized glowing ball makes tracking with depth nice & easy), though I rather doubt their "sub-millimetre precision" tracking claims from a 720p camera. Gamers get an accurate free-form control method, Sony gets to sell plenty of ball-on-a-stick controllers, everyone's happy.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Exhibit A: Rocket Launcher == n00bstick
1178161 is prime...
I know quite a few people I had to drag, kicking and screaming, to play a game on the Wii with me. They almost ALWAYS enjoy themselves. But more often than not, they flat out REFUSE to admit they enjoyed themselves and start bitching about the controller shape or the shell color or just about anything to convince themselves that they hate the system.
Same thing happens with Flash games
Yes, people playing the Wii for the first time always enjoy the experience. It's the "wow" factor.
But, like the hate for Flash games, the hate for Wii and its games is much for the same reason. The games are (usually) hollow with little replay value. The Wii games in particular are mostly designed to entertain the new "motion-control" crowd and leave the seasoned veterans bored out of their minds.
Most people who buy the Wii play it for about four months, then it collects dust until they sell it.
Nintendo's solution requires not just the controller but also a sensor bar.
The motion controls for the Wii are handled by the internal components of the Wiimote and now the Motion Plus. The sensor bar is only used for onscreen pointers.
A creative programmer can use the IR for 3D, but nobody uses the Wii this way, most likely because it is underpowered.
Motion control is all about simulating and capturing human motion. Your FPS style trick jumping and 180 degree turns don't fall into that category, so I have some serious doubt that it will ever happen with motion controls. Or to say it another way: Quake-style FPS gameplay is in large part an artifact of the mouse controls, so its natural that the mouse works best with it.
I've never watched the series, so I guess I can look at the game far more objectively than you. Also, the DBZ MUGEN characters SUCK, so this is the MUGEN of DBZ. Also, owning both, DBZ knocks the CRAP out of Street Fighter IV. Much more detailed and challenging fighting system. More gameplay, less oooh shiny.
Retardball, eh? As if half the shit you may watch or play wouldn't be considered equally wasteful to another person. For example. FUCK YOUR STARCRAFT.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That's actually the original meaning of the word awful. It literally meant "full of awe". Somehow the word awesome has taken on a positive sense over the years, and awful has gained its negative connotation. Fun with words!
I can't wait for this to come, gets hacked and then we can use it as an interface on our pc's :)
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/090423.jpg
This comic sums that argument up nicely.
I beg to differ in some points.
It's still costy to develop for videogames. Nintendo is overly conservative in relation to new developers - actually they require you to have a proven background on other platforms to even START talking about giving you the sdk...
The indie developer always had to choose between the pc and not releasing a game at all (they COULD do for the Mac, but you know how's the gaming situation on Mac). You couldn't and you can't release your own game and then grow bigger for any tv console.
Well, the turning guy on this matter is, interestingly, apple. With the ipod touch and the iphone and the app store.
I don't know if that many indie devs are making money on it. But I'm sure apple is and amazon is doing a hell of money selling objective-c books.
If you could care less, it means you care a lot? And AWEful is awesome+awful?
I've read this several times, and tried to reply a couple. If its a troll its well crafted... if not... then I can't explain some of what you said.
Everyone I know who has bought one goes back to their other next-gen systems shortly after buying it, and the thing spends most of its time collecting dust.
This is pure troll on multiple levels.
1) Most people who own a Wii don't actually own another next-gen system. So they can't go "back to it".
2) Given 1 above, how can it be that "everyone you know" that has a wii has another nextgen console? Either your flat out lying, or you hang out exclusively with hard core gamers. And if that's the case you should be aware your experience is ridiculously skewed.
3) "collecting dust"? Why the negative spin? As if its a bad thing that it pretty much only gets pulled out at parties or social occasions? That's what most people bought it for. "collecting dust" makes it sound like some sort of horrible waste... like buying an exercise bike that NEVER gets used after the first week. Most people I know with a Wii, even those that don't play it much... e.g. like my parents, fire it up when the 'grandkids' come to visit, at family dinners, etc. That's precisely what they bought it for.
They never had any intention of completing a 250 hour RPG, or trash talking 12 year olds in an online FPS 6 hours a day...
yeah I don't see the point of Microsoft and Sony even trying.
The casual gaming market has been won by the Wii. The reason for this is that the Wii is cheaper.
There are other consideration of how the Wii has advantages over the PS3 and the 360, for example the Wii has the rights to the recognizable faces of the Nintendo franchises (Mario etc.).
But Sony and Microsoft can close the gap in some ways to court the casual gaming market. They have the chance to create killer apps for their motion sensor controllers.
But the one thing they can't change is their price.
And that is going to kill them, because a casual gamer wants a low-cost system.
On the other hand, the 360 has the best online play and content distribution out of any next-gen console.
I'm pretty sure that no-one can disagree with this.
That could be a huge advantage in courting the casual gaming market.
This is a battle that Microsoft and Sony are trying to fight, these motion sensor controllers can only be realisticly be used for casual gaming purposes. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
Retardball Z? No thanks.
Dude you are so insightful. You cut right to the core of Dragonball and looked at its soul.
"Retardball?" I'm still laughing at that! You win the internet.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso