Noone expects Nintendo to take the lead in "mature" titles but they should at least take the lead in pushing the motion controls in every segment of the market instead of making them look like some toy for casual gamers while "real" gamers keep pushing their crosshairs around with the elegance of a supermarket trolley in the recent flood of games using an analog stick for aiming.
Yeah, ever since the Wii came out everyone who's ever touched a console before then has rebranded himself as "hardcore" even the people who only play Halo and the yearly edition of Madden.
Nintendo is trying to work on the core market, the problem I see is that they're failing to leverage the Wii's primary strength to outmaneuver MS and Sony, instead producing Gamecube 1.5 games that obviously end up being nothing that'll impress HD console owners. IMO they should lower the investment into straight sequels to last gen games and instead invest in games that actually drive the point home that the Wii is the step in the right direction even for those who currently buy core games. I don't think that's impossible, games like the many xPS games on the HD consoles are massively improved by the Wiimote.
On the other hand I doubt MS and Sony have a chance at claiming the expanded market, Sony sees motion controls as a way to appeal more to the hardcore gamers while MS is going for a relaunch that will probably result in a massive backlash from their core audience which I doubt they have the guts to swallow. Natal is unsuitable for core game designs, unlike the Wiimote it's not a controller that's being improved with new features, it loses the controller completely and thereby loses all possibilities that cannot be offered by body motion detection (e.g. walking around). Natal cannot be easily added to core games since full body control needs to have the whole game designed around it so they can't have Natal-core hybrid games to appease their core audience, Natal will have to go all out casual in its software offerings and I doubt third parties will really help in that arena.
However, what's more important than arguing about technology is the software they'll offer and we haven't seen ANY software (that could be sold at retail) for either system. The Wii didn't claim the "casual" market because of the controller but because of Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Third parties are struggling severely at making games that resonate like those two with the audience and I haven't seen any evidence that MS or Sony would be more competent at that job.
Sean Malstrom suspects that Nintendo invested in the wrong direction with a focus on user generated content and only realized too late that that direction is futile, scrapping a lot of already done work and having to quickly make up something new for E3. Well, at least they have 2D Mario which is about as big a seller as Wii Fit (3D Mario doesn't come close).
Noone will do 1:1 sword movement because players will just swing the controller in ways a sword could never move. Red Steel 2 (was demoed at E3) has 1:1 until you do a slash, then it slashes on a straight line and only returns control to you after the slash is completed, I think that makes the most sense since you'd have no valid reason to move in a different direction mid-slash.
We can deal with holodecks when they arrive. Current games are nothing like murder simulators, in fact I'd think a game where you have to perform the perfect murder would be interesting. All we currently have is TV wrestling with more chainsaws and blood.
And all we really need to know is that there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning.
I also liked the Earth Defense Force games when it comes to mindless shooting, they were pretty much about a giant horde of alien insects coming at you and you trying everything to stop them from getting close to you, especially at higher difficulties where even one of the lowliest enemies could almost kill you with one point-blank volley.
It takes a long time of adjustment, I can only aim in the general direction of an enemy within a split second, accurate headhsots require fighting with the deadzone of the stick. Meanwhile I was shooting heads (or glowy bits that are about the same size) like noone's business with the Wiimote on the second game I played (the first was Metroid Prime which doesn't have headshots). CoD4 on the DS is just plain tedious though, lining up the aiming pixel with the head of random goon with a gun #9001 in order to do any real damage was no fun. This whole obsession with headshots in videogames is getting terribly annoying. I'm currently playing Red Faction Guerilla on the 360 and at least that one doesn't seem to care where I hit the enemy with the gun that shoots exploding shurikens.
You say that console FPSes are slower paced, I found this to be mostly true but then I played Halo 3 which felt like it required the speed of Quake 3 Arena with controls that feel like steering a loaded shopping cart.
I think some buttons will always remain and if it's just the pause button. Some abstract things will probably need buttons no matter how much direct control we have.
Also I don't think full body controls can work unconditionally since many games have protagonists with superhuman abilities that would obviously be hard to replicate for your average beer-bellied person and that's in the cases where you actually play as a human.
There's still a massive demand for 2d jump & runs, IIRC New Super Mario Bros sold 18 million units so far and is still selling years after its release. It's successful enough to make Nintendo admit that there might be some demand for a 2D Mario on the Wii too.
Either way I do think the Wiimote has the potential to greatly improve many genres provided their designs are adjusted to actually utilize the ability to freely move the controller instead of still thinking in a simple FSE with transitions triggered by motions instead of buttons. Motion controls are analog, that can be used for many things (e.g. in sports games the whole inaccuracy in your movement).
Come to think of it, sports games were the most improved by it. That's because they're based on real lifeactivities that involve motions too. Many other genres are about made-up actions which seem to be made up around the old control paradigm. Sports games had a design that was based around motion control right away and only worked around with buttons, other games have a design that's intended for buttons. In my oppinion games need to be redesigned to really utilize motion controls because they have to get rid of all the things that were added to make them work on buttons.
The article is about the gamepad, not the keyboard and mouse (which are already necessitated by applicatons so no matter what gaming interfaces do those devices won't go away). I dare you to play a deathmatch using dual analogs against a Wiimote user.
I think pointing at GoW is wrong here too, the game was designed for buttons. Instead of having a consistent ruleset for swinging the chains you have a set of canned movements that are triggered via a combo tree. This is like pointing out that Tron isn't improved by a steering wheel. The games simply aren't designed for different control paradigms.
I like the classic controller except for the lack of handles. Some games use the analog sticks (e.g. Majora's Mask) and you really need handles to counteract the greater force necessary to move those sticks.
No real problem with the Wiimote, at least not moreso than with KB+mouse (I'm not a big headshotter, I prefer slamming rockets exactly into the pieces of the scenery the enemy will be next to when they hit and I find the realistic gun games where enemies can take half a clip unless you hit their head tedious). Works fine with the DS as well. Granted, these aren't what people call traditional controllers but they're console controllers.
Who said anything about buttons vs motion controls, except Microsoft with their Natal vaporware? The Wiimote has buttons on it yet also uses motion controls. Since motion controls still let you keep your fingers on the buttons there's really no reason to put that as a dichtomy. A game design can decide to use one or the other for a certain action but it should pick whichever is more useful for the action. Sometimes precision is not desirable, golf for example isn't improved by letting the player input angle and power in numbers despite the increased precision of that. Many games have at least one action that can safely be mapped to motion controls (I include the pointing functionality in that term BTW). The market on the HD consoles is dominated by games that would be better with the Wiimote. More accurate aiming, better analog range for driving, probably some way to make melee based games better, RTSes on a traditional controller are a freaking joke anyway, etc.
Fighting games seem to move more and more to a 3+1 button scheme (three attack strengths, one special button) so a 6 button controller is becoming unnecessary for them.
Eh, it has a fairly shitty d-pad, seems Nintendo is the only company who has figured out how to make a d-pad not suck (and yes, that thumb wrecking split-in-the-middle monstrosity Sony produces sucks) even after their patents on it expired. It's decent otherwise but really fails for games with digital controls. The tons of actions in a modern game tend to strike me as superfluous, I recall playing Black (yes, PS2 but same button count) and constantly forgetting which of the 8 face "buttons" (it used the d-pad directions too) did what, never mind that most of the actions were useless stuff like toggling the silencer on your weapon.
What is kinda annoying is the large number of xth person shooter games on the 360 which use dual analogs, a control scheme that's really more of a workaround and shouldn't be used as much as it is. Even worse, they demand faster and more precise aiming with every release, amplifying the inadequacy of the control scheme. It's fine when all you have to hit is an enemy the size of a barn, it's not fine when you have to deliver headshots to human-sized enemies at 50 meters in splitseconds.
Huh? Wiimote plus Nunchuk should have three buttons under your fingers, A, B and Z. I find the nunchuk more comfortable to hold by keeping my index finger on the Z button even when the game doesn't use it.
I think he meant that "shooter" means a shoot'em up. Though I do think that those can benefit from mouse controls because I find it easier to navigate through a bullet hell with a mouse cursor than with digital controls and a slow button.
Yeah but they've gone above the usual 1$ = 1€ stupidity and actually have a higher number for Europe too, as if they were still stuck in the early Euro days where the thing was at.8$.
Slashdot Mirror
Noone expects Nintendo to take the lead in "mature" titles but they should at least take the lead in pushing the motion controls in every segment of the market instead of making them look like some toy for casual gamers while "real" gamers keep pushing their crosshairs around with the elegance of a supermarket trolley in the recent flood of games using an analog stick for aiming.
Yeah, ever since the Wii came out everyone who's ever touched a console before then has rebranded himself as "hardcore" even the people who only play Halo and the yearly edition of Madden.
Of course we can question whether he actually used a ROM dumper to generate the image.
Nintendo is trying to work on the core market, the problem I see is that they're failing to leverage the Wii's primary strength to outmaneuver MS and Sony, instead producing Gamecube 1.5 games that obviously end up being nothing that'll impress HD console owners. IMO they should lower the investment into straight sequels to last gen games and instead invest in games that actually drive the point home that the Wii is the step in the right direction even for those who currently buy core games. I don't think that's impossible, games like the many xPS games on the HD consoles are massively improved by the Wiimote.
On the other hand I doubt MS and Sony have a chance at claiming the expanded market, Sony sees motion controls as a way to appeal more to the hardcore gamers while MS is going for a relaunch that will probably result in a massive backlash from their core audience which I doubt they have the guts to swallow. Natal is unsuitable for core game designs, unlike the Wiimote it's not a controller that's being improved with new features, it loses the controller completely and thereby loses all possibilities that cannot be offered by body motion detection (e.g. walking around). Natal cannot be easily added to core games since full body control needs to have the whole game designed around it so they can't have Natal-core hybrid games to appease their core audience, Natal will have to go all out casual in its software offerings and I doubt third parties will really help in that arena.
However, what's more important than arguing about technology is the software they'll offer and we haven't seen ANY software (that could be sold at retail) for either system. The Wii didn't claim the "casual" market because of the controller but because of Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Third parties are struggling severely at making games that resonate like those two with the audience and I haven't seen any evidence that MS or Sony would be more competent at that job.
Sean Malstrom suspects that Nintendo invested in the wrong direction with a focus on user generated content and only realized too late that that direction is futile, scrapping a lot of already done work and having to quickly make up something new for E3. Well, at least they have 2D Mario which is about as big a seller as Wii Fit (3D Mario doesn't come close).
More people will be annoyed by Extraction being a spinoff since it's in another genre.
Noone will do 1:1 sword movement because players will just swing the controller in ways a sword could never move. Red Steel 2 (was demoed at E3) has 1:1 until you do a slash, then it slashes on a straight line and only returns control to you after the slash is completed, I think that makes the most sense since you'd have no valid reason to move in a different direction mid-slash.
We can deal with holodecks when they arrive. Current games are nothing like murder simulators, in fact I'd think a game where you have to perform the perfect murder would be interesting. All we currently have is TV wrestling with more chainsaws and blood.
Serious is the highest regular difficulty, Mental is unlockable AFAIK and makes the enemies temporarily invisible.
And all we really need to know is that there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning.
I also liked the Earth Defense Force games when it comes to mindless shooting, they were pretty much about a giant horde of alien insects coming at you and you trying everything to stop them from getting close to you, especially at higher difficulties where even one of the lowliest enemies could almost kill you with one point-blank volley.
It takes a long time of adjustment, I can only aim in the general direction of an enemy within a split second, accurate headhsots require fighting with the deadzone of the stick. Meanwhile I was shooting heads (or glowy bits that are about the same size) like noone's business with the Wiimote on the second game I played (the first was Metroid Prime which doesn't have headshots). CoD4 on the DS is just plain tedious though, lining up the aiming pixel with the head of random goon with a gun #9001 in order to do any real damage was no fun. This whole obsession with headshots in videogames is getting terribly annoying. I'm currently playing Red Faction Guerilla on the 360 and at least that one doesn't seem to care where I hit the enemy with the gun that shoots exploding shurikens.
You say that console FPSes are slower paced, I found this to be mostly true but then I played Halo 3 which felt like it required the speed of Quake 3 Arena with controls that feel like steering a loaded shopping cart.
I think some buttons will always remain and if it's just the pause button. Some abstract things will probably need buttons no matter how much direct control we have.
Also I don't think full body controls can work unconditionally since many games have protagonists with superhuman abilities that would obviously be hard to replicate for your average beer-bellied person and that's in the cases where you actually play as a human.
The keyboard works great for games that use an arcade stick since it has the same kind of palms-down operation.
There's still a massive demand for 2d jump & runs, IIRC New Super Mario Bros sold 18 million units so far and is still selling years after its release. It's successful enough to make Nintendo admit that there might be some demand for a 2D Mario on the Wii too.
Either way I do think the Wiimote has the potential to greatly improve many genres provided their designs are adjusted to actually utilize the ability to freely move the controller instead of still thinking in a simple FSE with transitions triggered by motions instead of buttons. Motion controls are analog, that can be used for many things (e.g. in sports games the whole inaccuracy in your movement).
Come to think of it, sports games were the most improved by it. That's because they're based on real lifeactivities that involve motions too. Many other genres are about made-up actions which seem to be made up around the old control paradigm. Sports games had a design that was based around motion control right away and only worked around with buttons, other games have a design that's intended for buttons. In my oppinion games need to be redesigned to really utilize motion controls because they have to get rid of all the things that were added to make them work on buttons.
The article is about the gamepad, not the keyboard and mouse (which are already necessitated by applicatons so no matter what gaming interfaces do those devices won't go away). I dare you to play a deathmatch using dual analogs against a Wiimote user.
I think pointing at GoW is wrong here too, the game was designed for buttons. Instead of having a consistent ruleset for swinging the chains you have a set of canned movements that are triggered via a combo tree. This is like pointing out that Tron isn't improved by a steering wheel. The games simply aren't designed for different control paradigms.
I like the classic controller except for the lack of handles. Some games use the analog sticks (e.g. Majora's Mask) and you really need handles to counteract the greater force necessary to move those sticks.
No real problem with the Wiimote, at least not moreso than with KB+mouse (I'm not a big headshotter, I prefer slamming rockets exactly into the pieces of the scenery the enemy will be next to when they hit and I find the realistic gun games where enemies can take half a clip unless you hit their head tedious). Works fine with the DS as well. Granted, these aren't what people call traditional controllers but they're console controllers.
Who said anything about buttons vs motion controls, except Microsoft with their Natal vaporware? The Wiimote has buttons on it yet also uses motion controls. Since motion controls still let you keep your fingers on the buttons there's really no reason to put that as a dichtomy. A game design can decide to use one or the other for a certain action but it should pick whichever is more useful for the action. Sometimes precision is not desirable, golf for example isn't improved by letting the player input angle and power in numbers despite the increased precision of that. Many games have at least one action that can safely be mapped to motion controls (I include the pointing functionality in that term BTW). The market on the HD consoles is dominated by games that would be better with the Wiimote. More accurate aiming, better analog range for driving, probably some way to make melee based games better, RTSes on a traditional controller are a freaking joke anyway, etc.
Fighting games seem to move more and more to a 3+1 button scheme (three attack strengths, one special button) so a 6 button controller is becoming unnecessary for them.
Eh, it has a fairly shitty d-pad, seems Nintendo is the only company who has figured out how to make a d-pad not suck (and yes, that thumb wrecking split-in-the-middle monstrosity Sony produces sucks) even after their patents on it expired. It's decent otherwise but really fails for games with digital controls. The tons of actions in a modern game tend to strike me as superfluous, I recall playing Black (yes, PS2 but same button count) and constantly forgetting which of the 8 face "buttons" (it used the d-pad directions too) did what, never mind that most of the actions were useless stuff like toggling the silencer on your weapon.
What is kinda annoying is the large number of xth person shooter games on the 360 which use dual analogs, a control scheme that's really more of a workaround and shouldn't be used as much as it is. Even worse, they demand faster and more precise aiming with every release, amplifying the inadequacy of the control scheme. It's fine when all you have to hit is an enemy the size of a barn, it's not fine when you have to deliver headshots to human-sized enemies at 50 meters in splitseconds.
Huh? Wiimote plus Nunchuk should have three buttons under your fingers, A, B and Z. I find the nunchuk more comfortable to hold by keeping my index finger on the Z button even when the game doesn't use it.
I came from the SNES so I thought of Z as a better positioned SELECT button.
I think he meant that "shooter" means a shoot'em up. Though I do think that those can benefit from mouse controls because I find it easier to navigate through a bullet hell with a mouse cursor than with digital controls and a slow button.
They've got Photoshop Elements which I've seen in stores so some consumers must be buying it.
Yeah but they've gone above the usual 1$ = 1€ stupidity and actually have a higher number for Europe too, as if they were still stuck in the early Euro days where the thing was at .8$.
Also here in America French is not a language that is regularly spoken.
You mean Quebec finally sunk into the ocean? Rejoice!