By Nelson Schneider - 12/11/11 at 05:00 PM CT
What started as an out-of-left-field stunt by the oldest of the three current console manufacturers turned out to be one of the defining characteristics of the 7th Generation of gaming consoles (aside from shooter domination). Motion controls started a gaming controversy: Are games more accessible when played using semi-natural movements instead of reflex-trained button presses? Are motion controls suitable for all genres? As Generation Motion draws to a close, let us look back and see what we, and our console-making corporate friends, have learned.
Nintendo
The company that started the whole motion control craze built-up a mountain of cash on a foundation of broken promises. While still a good game in-and-of-itself, “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” is also the embodiment of lazy motion controls that don’t actually add anything to the gameplay. With the Wii, “waggle” became the accepted descriptor of its so-called “revolutionary” motion controls that usually amounted to little more than replacing a simple, accurate button press with a semi-responsive waggling of the entire controller. Nintendo even realized that their hardware didn’t live up to expectations, thus implementing only the barest of motion controls in all of their first-party titles.
But where motion controls failed, another facet of the Wiimote’s novel design proved to be quite impressive, even in rough form: The Pointer. The Wii’s on-screen pointer is the closest thing console gamers have had access to on a widespread basis that offers similar input capabilities to that much-loved PC input device: the mouse. By using relative location, the Wiimote allows players to move on-screen cursors with far greater ease and precision than an analog joystick. While not suitable for all situations, like the pixel-perfect precision required by traditional light gun games, the Wiimote’s pointer has become the best new control device to come out of Generation Motion.
Of course, Nintendo wasn’t content to just give up on those broken promises. Now, 6 years after we were promised a “Legend of Zelda” game with motion controlled sword fights, Nintendo has finally delivered in the form of “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” and the Motion+ add-on. Why did Nintendo wait until years after the Wii’s release to introduce an upgrade that finally allows the full range of motion controls that the original Wiimote was supposed to deliver? Would an extra $20 gyroscope really have made the original Wii too expensive? Apparently Nintendo has a hard time learning lessons from its own mistakes, as there has never been a successful optional add-on for a Nintendo console. Multi-taps? No support. N64 RAM Expansion? No support. Wii Motion+? Still no support. The number of Wii games that are compatible with Motion+ can be counted on your fingers! And half of them are just too-little-too-late tech demos that don’t really amount to anything. Golf fans should quite enjoy the added precision in the latest Tiger Woods title, but non-sports gamers who want a solid motion controlled experience are down to “Red Steel 2” and “Skyward Sword.” We’re supposed to buy ugly, controller-embiggening dongles or replace all of our Wiimotes for 2 games? Really Nintendo?
Okay, fine, you got me, but only because of sale prices and my love of your first party titles. It’s a good thing these controllers will still be compatible with the WiiU.
Sony
Oh, Sony, what were you thinking? Were you so desperate to copy Nintendo and prove that you could “innovate” that you were willing to destroy what modicum of respect gamers still had for you after the “599 U.S. DOLLARS/GIANT ENEMY CRAB/RIIIIIIIDGE RACER” debacle? Hastily adding half-baked motion controls and removing rumble from the traditional-style PlayStation controller was an unmitigated disaster. No games supported the SixAxis – which I lovingly refer to as the “SuxAsses” – in any meaningful way, aside from “Lair,” the undisputed worst PS3 game ever made.
The form factor of a normal controller was completely wrong for motion controls. So in an attempt copy Nintendo even further, Sony came up with the PlayStation Move, a motion controller that looks and functions almost identically to a Nintendo Wiimote+. What Sony failed to notice, while they were so busy scraping-together the tech needed to make the Move different enough from the Wiimote and avoid costly lawsuits, was the fact that gamers had responded negatively toward Nintendo’s attempts at motion controls and that the company behind this generation’s innovation had largely abandoned the idea. So now Sony is left holding the bag with an ENTIRELY optional motion controller that has no meaningful software support. They couldn’t even get the pointer functionality right, as the Move needs to be recalibrated CONSTANTLY!
All of this failure, accomplished in the vain hope of capturing some of Nintendo’s success. Yet never did Sony realize that Nintendo wasn’t successful because of motion controls, but because of low prices and positive profit margins. Even the Grannies and other non-gamers who DID buy a Wii for the “motion controls” (read: “WiiSports”) would not have thrown down $599, nor $499, nor $399, nor $299 for a PS3, then another $80+ for a Move and a Nav (the Move’s version of Nintendo’s Nunchuck) just for the privilege of playing a virtual sport once every 6 months. And Sony wouldn’t have wanted that market even if they had managed to capture it. Sony always sells its consoles at a loss, hoping to rake-in big profits on game sales. The motion control crowd doesn’t actually buy games, but plays with whatever demo came in the box with the console.
Microsoft
“You are the controller?” Only if you interpret the word “control” in the loosest possible sense. Kinect isn’t so much a way to play games as it is a way to have “guided experiences.” Almost every Kinect game is so on-rails and heavily auto-piloted that it’s entirely possible to “win” them by not doing anything at all. The one genre Kinect does work for is dance games… but in this respect the entire thing might as well be a “Dance Dance Revolution” pad.
But Microsoft is not a videogame company. We shouldn’t expect them to know how to make game interfaces. We should, however, expect them to know how to make practical computer interfaces, and in that respect, Kinect might just be a diamond in the rough. While the current version of the device is a little slow with its tracking, the ability to use your hand as a mouse cursor is pretty neat. The media center capabilities of the Xbox 360 can only be enhanced by the ability to give voice commands and wave your hands at the TV to make it change channels, select movies to stream, etc. Traditional controllers always feel out-of-place with this kind of functionality (watching Blu-Rays with a DualShock 3 in-hand is ridiculous), but Kinect fits into this niche perfectly. If Microsoft bundled a Windows 8-powered Surface table with a Kinect 2.0, they could easily become the new King of the Living Room, regardless of whether or not the thing actually could play games.
So what have we learned from Generation Motion?
- Never replace a button-press with a waggle.
- Never shoehorn-in unnatural motion controls just for the sake of having them.
- The Pointer is the greatest hardware addition to console gaming in years…
- … provided it can stay calibrated longer than 2 minutes.
- Don’t count on non-gamers to buy anything once the fad has worn off.
- Don’t try to sell optional upgrades to anyone: Developers won’t support them and customers won’t buy them.
Comments
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/18/11 at 05:07 PM CT
Johnny Lee's demo is EXACTLY how the PS Move works (minus mounting the ice-cream-dildo to your head). SONY STOLE HIS IDEA!!!
I don't think motion over graphics is a "good" decision, I think it's "a decision." It made Nintendo money in spite of the fact that third parties have hated them since 1996 and continue to hate them to this day. It all comes down to the fact that Nintendo got a "kiddie" rep that they can't seem to shake.
Jonzor - wrote on 12/18/11 at 01:11 AM CT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
It's not real hard to imagine some kind of cover-based rail shooter, at the bare minimum. It could take the good parts of Kinect (immersion) and removes the issues with inconsistent control due to crappy detection/interpretation by just giving you a controller.
So you'd call the motion-controls-over-graphics move a good decision, even if Nintendo can only hit that well one time (since a lot of the Ocean isn't going to buy a Wii U after proving to themselves they actually don't play video games enough to justify owning a console)? It's all hypothetical, but maybe you pull in someone that ends up being a repeat buyer with better hardware even if you lose some of their precious Blue Ocean.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, just feeling retrospective. Or maybe I'm just looking for any excuse to try and talk shit about the Blue Ocean because of how I feel it lowered the bar in general for gaming as a whole on Nintendo's console this generation.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/17/11 at 02:36 PM CT
Yeah, Jonzor, I've seen quite a few interesting tech demos for all three companies' motion controllers (not the one you specifically referenced, though). None of them really have impressed me as looking particularly fun, but the fact that people are able to do such things with limited hardware AND unofficial means of interacting with that hardware makes me think there is potential for subtler and much more impressive motion controls in the future.
I don't think Nintendo putting an additional $50 worth of guts into the Wii would have helped them any. It would have made the Wii "too expensive" for the "Blue Ocean" of people who only bought the console for WiiSports. I also have a strong gut feeling that the third parties would have continued to ignore Nintendo, like they did for the N64 and GameCube, thus leaving the Wii with a similar library to what it already has.
Nintendo made their money this-gen off of fat profit margins on old hardware used in novel ways. Trimming those margins by making the hardware better would have only hurt Nintendo. (Of course, now they're maiming themselves with the 3DS, so apparently they didn't really learn anything.)
Nick - wrote on 12/14/11 at 12:54 PM CT
another useless accessory, this one for the 3DS
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57342840-17/nintendo-3ds-circle-pad-pro-launching-feb-7-for-$20/?part=rss&subj=latest-news&tag=title
Jonzor - wrote on 12/13/11 at 05:26 PM CT
Did you ever see the videos by Johnny Chung Lee of his did-it-myself Wii projects? I can't believe we never saw anyone try to knock out at least one head-tracking rail-shooter, since one guy made a tech demo all by himself that sold me pretty quickly. It seemed like a way to not only create a new at-home game experience, but beat the Kinect at their own game. Aside from waiting to get motion controls right with the Wii Motion Plus, I think this could have been Nintendo's biggest miss on the motion-control front.
In retrospect, how would you rate Nintendo's strategy to use motion controls to change the industry so much that they felt they could cut such huge corners on the computing power front? Years later as the Wii is showing its age even in Nintendo's own games, (Skyward Sword comes to mind) do you think they could have added another $50 to the price, thrown some more horsepower under the hood, and be reaping the benefits now?
