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The PlayStation Move Arrives — a Hands-On Report
itwbennett writes "The PlayStation Move hit retail stores on Friday and blogger Peter Smith spent the weekend putting it (and his shoulder) through its paces. So how does this motion controller compare to the Wii? Smith says it 'felt a lot more precise' but that 'there were instances where the depth perception of the camera got lost for a moment.' The bottom line: 'If you have a Wii and the Wii Motion Plus accessory, there isn't a whole lot here right now to justify $100-$170 worth of gear for most gamers.'"
CNET is similarly critical, complaining of the continual calibration requirements and the dearth of good launch titles. The Guardian's games blog agrees that quality games are currently lacking, but says the accuracy and responsiveness are a step up from the Wii, giving the Move a lot of potential. iFixit did a teardown, providing an interesting look at the hardware inside the device.
...this time it was US that was late.
We'll have to calibrate our polls to find out.
It's more common than you think.
Sounds like a defect in the wrist strap.
Ya, how dare they actually use the device for any meaningful length of time in their own homes/offices. Actually using the product, figuring out the good versus the bad and writing up a quality article just isn't warranted these days, apparently.
Not according to IGN.
Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/112/1121705p1.html
Never forget the pris dork factor of waving those things around.
Having your parents buy this is a great way to ensure your virginity if you're a teen boy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I keep thinking Sony has delivered an answer to a question nobody is asking. You can buy a Wii brand new for $150 at any store you like, or you can spend $400 on a PS3 with the Move hardware. Sure, the Sony can play Blu-Ray, but people don't buy the Wii to play DVDs so why would they care about Blu-Ray? And even if the hardware is superior, it doesn't have the library of games available that the Wii already has.
The other end of the potential market would be people who already have a PS3 but really want Wii-like controls, but how many people does that segment represent? How many people who play Final Fantasy 28 on their PS3 finish playing that for 912 hours straight and then say "gee, I wish I could do Wii bowling on this console"?
The slightly cynical side of me wonders if this is just Sony trying to find a way to stick it to Nintendo (again) after the way that the SNES CD (later PS One) deal went down.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Thanks, Sony. Thanks for adding to the overabundence of games with needless motion controls. All this will do is fragment the gaming world even more, while taking potentially good games and making them a waggle fest. Nintendo already had this covered...you didn't have to step in with your overpriced hardware to saturate the market even further.
Living With a Nerd
I picked up the Move and EyePet on Friday. While Sports Champions is nothing more than Wii HD, EyePet proves the real power of the Move setup. This game will not be for everyone (but if you have kids, it is 100% amazing) but what it does is amazing. With augmented reality and seeing yourself on the screen the tracking has to be perfect or it will simply look wrong. At no point when my four year old has been using it has it missed a beat. On top of that, EyePet uses a lot of video feedback from the camera for things as well. The best example is when your pet falls asleep and it starts "dreaming" about things it has done with you. It stores recorded of things you did with the pet and plays them back in a dream bubble over the pets head.
If Sony can get more titles out like this that show how it isn't Wii HD, they will have something.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
So how does the gun aiming work ? Is it any good with the Move?
I hate the wii gun aiming. It does not calibrate at all. So you need to be a fixed distance from the screen for the best results.
And aiming from the hip where you move your hands in response to what you have on the screen works better than sight aiming where the cross hairs do not track the sights over the full screen.
... it doesn't work very well, there aren't any games out for it yet, they're late to market and it looks like a sex toy for a Dalek.
You want *how* much? Nah, I'm going to go and buy a Wii, a 24" LCD TV, three extra Wiimotes, four nunchucks and a bunch of games for that kind of money.
...or does the orb on this thing make it look like a sex toy?
Yes, it would be much better for the review to be about the first 10 minutes of using the device, that anyone could just try for themselves in the store anyway.
Rather than about the impressions after a weekend of using it, something that most people can't do without putting down the cash.
Sony should have just written a wii emulator or something à la WINE after all now they make money on the hardware they could somewhat steal from the wii. Just like back on the days my colecovision had an atari 2600 emulator. Sony could have even made it easy for the R&D just make the system compatible with the wiimote and they didn't have to develop their own. I can use wiimotes in my PC. I use them with the dolphin emulator works very good.
Both wii and Ps3 both run on powerPC architecture and for graphics they both use opengl. Also for the remotes for both system they are bluetooth. Maybe now that the thing has been jailbroken someobody will come out with an emulator for the wii emulator for the PS3.
A millisecond delay? I'm sure there's more than a millisecond, given that it only draws a frame every 16ms at best.
As mentioned below, I'd love to know what TV IGN used, as other reviewers didn't mention this and your TV can add a lot of delay.
If this lag on button release is real, it's surely due to bad programming and not Move itself. Move is a bluetooth controller, same as a DualShock 3 (or a Wiimote for that matter). If DualShock 3 can detect and signal to the host a button release with no detectable lag (and it does), then there's no reason Move can't do the same thing.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
From a technical perspective, this is just such a pathetic response from sony to the motion controller game.
Sony used to be such an innovator (or so everyone tells me) but all I have seen from them for years is pisspoor effort after pisspoor effort. This is a particularly sad effort on their part.
Why do I say that?
From a motion tracking point of view, tracking a brightly colored ball is pretty much the simplest possible thing you can do. Check out this embedded system you could buy for $150 or so in 2002 that did it as a basic demo:
http://www.acroname.com/examples/10067/10067.html
It was one of the first things I did when I learned how to use the OpenCV computer vision library. Its just pathetically easy to do. You basically max out the contrast, and any pixels still white are the bright spots. Go check out ball tracking or blob tracking videos on YouTube. Every college student with a class in MATLAB has probably learned how to do it from the ground up, without a library.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is creating Kinect, which combines multiple cameras to create depth and color maps of your living room and model your entire skeleton in real time. *That* is incredibly complex and extremely innovating!
It is just so sad that Sony is actually releasing this as a product. It is literally like someone said "Hey, we need to do something about the wii", and someone said, "okay, how can we do motion tracking the cheapest way?"
In fact, that's probably why they did it. Instead of putting an infrared tracking camera in each remote (like the Wii), they can just use one camera on the TV and just put LEDs in the remote. They probably did this first and foremost because it was cheap, and for no other reason. Its sad that a company that used to innovate is not just a cost-cutting me-too company. They didn't think about how to improve on the concept, or if it even made sense; they just copied it with the least cost they could.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Remember when we had to wait a month to get reviews? What was with that?
if I wanted to wave sticks in the air while playing video games, I would have bought a Wii. I will stay with my good ol' controller till a solid neural interface is invented!
Scene: a couple of years from now:
Sony: We've decide that we are limiting your Move to only work within a 2 meter range of your TV.
Gamers: But what if my TV is bigger, and I need or want to be more than 2 meters from my TV?
Sony: Tough. We've decided that it makes sense for us to limit this. You WILL apply the update. You WILL be limited.
Gamers: But WHY?
Sony: The reason we are giving is that some players are abusing the ability to be more than 2 meters from the TV to cheat at games, or something.
Scene: Today.
Me: Sorry Sony, but you've screwed me once on my PS3. From here on out, I am NOT buying hardware from you. I will avoid buying new games. In fact, the only real money you are getting is what you get from my Blu-Ray purchases, which isn't much. You want me to buy this? Then stop taking features away from me that I bought and paid for, that you advertised, and that were a part of why I bought from you - indeed, give me those features BACK. Until then, I am not interested.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The Truemotion controller from Sixense was showcased a few years back and looks a lot more impressive. It knows it's absolute position and orientation in 3D space by measuring a magnetic field from it's base station. Because it doesn't rely on sensing motion, it can deal with very slow and precise movements that other accelerometer-based systems can't deal with. The only problem is that you can't really buy it yet.
I bought two move controllers, - and it does what it says out of the box - submillimeter accuracy, in 3 dimensions. I downloaded this "Stack the blocks" game called tumble. Shows off how accurate the device is - 1:1 mapping of the controller in RL onto the virtual world, including "in" and "out" and rotation - amazing. Like to see a Wii do something like that. Now, where's my "Minority report" GUI?? (and other "good" games).
You'd only have to worry if the PS3 only came with a motion controller. Game companies use the lowest common denominator control scheme. If a console ships with a real controller and an optional motion controller then the only games that will use the motion controller are games that really need it. If, like the Wii, the default controller is motion controls and a real controller is optional, you'll be jerking off your controller instead of pressing buttons.
I'd be able to take the "Move" more seriously if it didn't look like a sex toy.
There, I said it. Someone had to. Seriously, who designed this and instantly did not think "our customers will think this looks like a Dildo"? Were they trying to copy Nintendo's "Wii" (thanks capt. obvious) and who thought up the name, they must have put a whole 10 minutes work into that.
This comment was written on my Microsoft Type, computed on my AMD Process and not proof read using my Samsung See.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
He speaks of the lag of the release of the frisbee, which takes place when you release a button.
Buttons aren't motion control, there's no technical reason the buttons on this device should have any more lag than on a DualShock 3.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Sony is a big company. Really big. They make game consoles, portable electronics, cell phones, audio equipment, TVs, video equipment, movies, music CDs... I bet they could even make cars if they were so inclined, just like Mitsubishi and Daewoo. The release of the Move makes you realize that Sony was too big for it's britches.
An E3 article I read said that the Sony Move would be released Sept 20th. A more recent article said Sept 17th. It seems that nobody was really sure of the true release date. There was even a kerfuffle about stores selling the Move too early. Why didn't Sony make this a solid release date?
There were *NO* commercials on television touting the new product. None! Did Sony's marketing Dept just not get the memo? Something like this should be HUGE, but there was NOTHING! I had to go looking for ads for it on youtube and the PSN bfore I saw it in use.
I visited 5 stores over the weekend looking for a REAL hands on demo, and found none. All the stores had the devices in stock, but none of them had a demo. Does Sony have absolutely no confidence in their product to have a demo of it so people could try it before they buy it? I wasn't about to buy a motion controller that I couldn't test first.
And the only game right now that supports it is some sports package... Just like Wii sports. Is that the only thing they can think of for motion control? Sports? It's pretty obvious what any motion controller would be good for: A lightsaber battle game! Maybe even a swashbuckling pirate game. Instead, we get... Archery. Yawn!
It seems that Sony released a product without being prepared to sell it. I'm not surprised that it got mixed reviews.
The camera that senses the controller has how much resolution?
Are its images restricted to a separate piece of hardware that isn't accessible to the console CPU?
If not, what else CAN access the images?
Got the move and it is a very satisfying solution. Quick movements and a lot less lag than I thought it would have. I am not even a big fan of motion gaming but this solution works great because of its reliability, and that is actually what you want in gaming. The technology might not be the hottest, but if you make a movement you want it registered, missing your motions is makes gaming a lot less fun. Tabletennis and gladiator are great because of that reliability. Sure the current line-up aint great, but that doesnt dismiss this solution for motion gaming.
Originally about the Kinnect, but still applies to the Move.
Leo: "So, you're getting the new motion thing?"
Aeris: "Fuck no, I've already got a Wii."
Can anyone who owns this product, confirm whether the new Move controllers (Move + Move Navigation) work together to replace the standard controller when using the old/ordinary non-Move games?
Wrong product.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=294
And thus I can assert there isn't button lag.
For one, you haven't addressed the issue in question.
I did actually, I said that if there is lag, it's not due to Move. That's what this whole subthread you are responding to is about. My assertion (well it wasn't at the time) is not that the game cannot have lag, but that if it does, it cannot be attributable to Move, but to the game itself, because the buttons on Move have no reason to be more laggy than the buttons on a DS3.
What I said:
If this lag on button release is real, it's surely due to bad programming and not Move itself.
I don't know why you're trying to turn my statement from the time into "there is no lag".
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95