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.

Comments

Is this a bad move for Sony?

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

We'll have to calibrate our polls to find out.

Re:Is this a bad move for Sony?

[pyrosine]

When your customers dont have need of it - everyone who has wanted something wii-like has a wii by now (hence the decreasing sales and interest in the platform, the latter bit being my personal opinion through observation) and wont want a "playstation move".

Re:Wow

[rotide]

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.

Responsiveness

[Anonymous Coward]

the accuracy and responsiveness are a step up from the Wii

Not according to IGN.

My only issue is the lag: there's definitely a millisecond delay between your hand and the on-screen representation with Move and Sports Champions. Disc Golf is great, but I do admit having to work with the lag by letting go of the button just a split-second before the natural release point in my swing. That's where the Wii controller excels: there doesn't feel like there's any delay in its one-to-one motion.

Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/112/1121705p1.html

Re:Responsiveness

[Spad]

Which, given the 4 years since the Wii was released, is pretty poor.

By all accounts, the Move should blow the basic Wii controller out of the water and be at least par with the Motion Plus.

Re:Responsiveness

[h4rr4r]

Considering IGNs competence I would want to know if the TV or the Move system added this lag.

Re:Responsiveness

[DrXym]

By all accounts, the Move should blow the basic Wii controller out of the water and be at least par with the Motion Plus.

And it does. It's an extremely precise and accurate controller and the lag is not really noticeable. It is so accurate that the Start the Party game is able to overlay a sword / bat / etc exactly over the top of your camera image.

Whether this means anything in the long term is another matter.

Short version: No Games, Waste of Money

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Who is this for, really?

[damn_registrars]

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.

Re:Who is this for, really?

[Locke2005]

I own a Wii, but not a PS3 (because I'm cheap). The difference is not just in the graphics, which are much, much better on the PS3. It's also that the PS3 includes a hard drive which allows for a lot of downloadable content! This makes a big difference in games like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, which I recommend getting for PS3 or Xbox, not for Wii. The stupid thing is, the Wii has USB ports, so it could easily add an external hard drive or flash memory. Also, although the Wiimote excels as a swordplay simulator and makes a decent steering wheel, it sucks as a pointing device. Wiimote also has rumble and audio (yes, it's 2-way); do the Sony remotes provide this? My biggest complaint about the Wiimote (besides it's imprecision) is the wire between Wiimote and numchuck -- it's shorter than the distance between my hands. I would have preferred 2 separate wireless devices rather than 1 device with a tether to another device; it's just awkward. If money were no object, I'd own a PS3; but then, if money were no object, I'd own all 3 consoles -- PS3, XBox, and Wii. That's why PS3 sales will never exceed Wii sales; if you can afford a PS3, you can probably afford a Wii as well!

Re:Who is this for, really?

[antek9]

And considering the Move is a PS3 add-on that costs nearly as much as a Wii...

What makes you assume that? I only paid 40 bucks (well, euros, to be exact) for one Move controller so far, plus another 40 for Sports Champions, as I already owned the Eye camera peripheral. Alternatively, the starter set (comprising the cam, Move controller, and a demo disc) is being sold for 55 euros around here. If you consider Sports Champions essential for completing the PS3 'upgrade' to full Wii potential, you are still looking at less than 100 €/$.

If you walk out of the store with a bag containing the starter pack, another Move controller, two sidekick controllers (at 30 $ each), and Sports Champions, you will have paid around 195,-. You do the math for a Wii with Wiimote plus, additional Wiimote plus, and two nunchuck controllers yourself, please.

Re:Who is this for, really?

[kai.chan]

It is surprising to me that your post is +5 Insightful, when you are basing your opinion on false understanding of the different technologies.

The Wii is limited by the use of vectors rather than absolute positioning; whereas the PS Move is highly accurate in both minute and large movements.

People nowadays have a mentality that Wii = Casual games, therefore, Motion Controls = Casual games. What most people fail to understand (and I expected much more of the tech-savvy Slashdot users) is that the reason why motion controls has been associated with casual games is due to the lack of precision.

How many games on the Wii has successfully integrated motion control where you are actually moving your character's limbs/weapons in 1:1 precision? None (The new Zelda game didn't seem to be as accurate as the PS Move during the E3 2010 demonstration). Wii games, and most definitely, Kinect games, must be forgiving in design to account for the lack of precision; hence, the existence of causal games.

In terms of technology, PS Move is everything that we thought Wii can do when the Wii was first introduced. Who was disappointed when they first played Wii Boxing and found out that Wii is not 1:1? I sure did.

We all know that Kinect is all smoke-and-mirrors spewed out by Microsoft in order to trick uninformed users of what it can and can't do. The Kinect Star Wars demo will NEVER be the way that Microsoft has led the uninformed to believe due to Kinect's high latency and the software challenges associated with handling different body sizes and human movements.

PS Move, however, has highly accurate dynamic tracking (both slight and large movements) and will have amazingly accurate fighting games, lightsaber fights, etc, etc that is not possible on the Wii and especially Kinect. So to lump the PS Move with Wii bowling and base your opinion on previous motion control implementations is illogical.

Re:Who is this for, really?

[Fallingcow]

I've got a Wii and a PS3. Even after the Move, the Wii remains the king of fucking expensive controllers.

Gotta have a Wiimote for each set, to be the body of your absurd controller-squid. $40. Now you've got a pointer, no analog stick, and you can turn it sideways and PRESTO CHANGO it turns in to the least ergonomic Nintendo game controller since the NES. Terrific.

So you're gonna need an analog stick, plus motion sensing for your other hand if you want to use any of the games that take advantage of that, including one that comes with your Wii. That's another, what, $30?

Now to take care of the fact that the Wiimote is a shitty traditional controller and, surprise surprise, hasn't completely replaced traditional controls with arm waving and controller shaking, you'll need to buy a real controller to plug in to your controller (I put a controller in your controller so you can...) Another $30 or so.

$100 for a mostly-complete controller (since the IR pointer's highest purpose is obviously to be used in rail shooters, you'll still need a gun frame to stick the Wiimote in, otherwise what's the point? But I'll leave that aside for argument's sake), versus $50+$40 for a Sixaxis plus Move.

It's the hidden cost of a Wii, I've discovered; the console's cheaper but it's much more expensive to outfit (or at least was much more expensive before the Move, and is now--assuming enough games come out the the Move becomes a must-have--only slightly more expensive). Add in that you'll have to buy a recharge station and battery packs--another thing you don't need for the PS3--and you've got a console that's only cheap if you play it alone.

I don't hate the Wii (I would have sold mine if I did) but it's not that much cheaper than the other consoles if you game with friends, it's (oddly enough) far less travel-friendly (console+3x4 controller parts+IR thingy+charger=15 parts, vs. 5 for a PS3+4 controllers, plus you can use the PS3 controllers even if you forgot to charge them first) and it's not really a very good system out-of-the-box, until you pick up some of the extra crap.

Oh, and I forgot about Plus. Jesus. I swear Nintendo's whole business model this generation is to nickle-and-dime its customers to death with peripherals.

Ugh

[Pojut]

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.

Not a Wii HD

[GweeDo]

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.

Re:Not a Wii HD

[h4rr4r]

You could probably get the kid a real pet for less.

Now that I have the smartassery out of the way, is this worth paying almost as much as a wii would cost?

I have a PS3 and am stuck between buying Move or a Wii.

Re:Not a Wii HD

[GweeDo]

My kids already have three pets and they have most definitely cost more than the Move (crap, probably more than the PS3 + Move + TV combined!) ;)

But is it worth it? Not yet. The software that is currently there isn't enough to fully justify it or prove the platform. Having said that, I do believe it shows the potential to be awesome. Check out this trailer for EchoChrome 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usn6eo9FeTM
If Sony can get more interesting Move titles like this out, they will really have something.

Re:It hit stores earlier...

[Anonymous Coward]

That and it looks like you're swinging around a vibrator.

From a technical perspective...

[Facegarden]

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

Re:From a technical perspective...

[dr.newton]

From a motion tracking point of view, tracking a brightly colored ball is pretty much the simplest possible thing you can do.

I agree; that was a good call on Sony's part. Clever of them to find an easier way to do something than the competition.

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...

Yeah, it's going to be hard to squeeze that kind of processing onto a console... Microsoft and their devs have their work cut out for them.

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.

Totally! Choosing the cheap way actually allowed Sony to approach Nintendo's price point for once, and making it easy for the camera to track allows for excellent accuracy.

I think we have a lot in common. We should be friends.

Re:From a technical perspective...

[CityZen]

The Move has 4 sensors:
1) Eye camera sensing the glowing ball.
2) accelerometer
3) gyroscope
4) magnetometer (3D compass)

It is the combination of all 4 of these that allows accurate tracking. There is no single sensor answer that gives a decent solution to the general tracking problem.

Re:From a technical perspective...

[Spatial]

It would seem harder to coordinate tracking of four balls flying around the room.

Nope. Sony applied the KISS principle here: The orbs on the end of the wand have RGB LEDs inside so they can differientate themselves by colour. It's actually pretty easy to track them.

Sorry Sony, but no.

[wowbagger]

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.

No hands on demos!

[freeze128]

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.

Re:So, in short...

[DrXym]

... 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.

Actually the hardware works extremely well and is getting high praise. The launch lineup runs the gamut from excellent to tacked on. As with any launch lineup, you pick and choose the best titles (Tumble, Sports Champions) or wait for the next wave.