So now that the holiday season has come to a close does anyone have impressions on the new motion control systems? I don't have either but I've heard amazing things about the Kinect. I've got a PS3 that I use for blu-rays but that's it. The only good game I've owned for it was Infamous which was still somewhat clunky. It seems that Sony is somewhat behind the curve when it comes to this new tech.

Thoughts and opinions?

I think your behind on new games. Infamous was great though Ill give you that. Speaking of Infamous, I am missing 1 of 350 blast shards for the platinum.. 1!!! and I cant find it anywhere. Of course that one pos is holding back a platinum trophy.

Ehem anyways, I hear decent stuff about it but I personally am not too excited about it. I mean I think the concept is great and a good start to future gaming but I prefer just simple buttons myself.

Move = Wii HD, but more precise

Kinect = PlayStation Eye, but more precise

Kinect will end up losing appeal because I really don't see it producing innovative games. Move will have a s*** ton of shooter support. That's about it.

The sales of both the Kinect and Move will be directly tied to what third party games come out for them. I'm an Xboxer so I prefer the Kinect (and I love the idea of controlling the menus with no controller at all) but I won't be sold on the Kinect until I see some quality games with innovative ideas that use the Kinect. The Move just feels like the Wii to me with a controller that looks like it came from Vibrators-R-Us.

Either way, both Sony & Microsoft have to avoid the trap that Nintendo fell into and come out with games that make use of their proprietary designs instead of reverse engineering a game to make the player have to play with some quirky control setup.

I hope I haven't started MoD on a rant now.

I did play one of the simplest kinect games, the river rafting one, was fun for a little bit but it's not for my age group. WIll wait and see what develops though, FPS and driving simulators could be fun.

BusyBadger wrote:I hope I haven't started MoD on a rant now.

Hope is for the WEAK! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *THUNDER*

Anyhoo.

The short version of my take on things is: There's a lot of potential, but it will never be realized.

The long version is this:

The Wii has been around for 5 years now. Motion control was neat at first. I have owned a Wii since launch. I love my Wii, and the library includes some good games. But the console is guilty of two MAJOR sins. The first is games that REQUIRE the player to use gimmicky (or even well-designed) motion controls when the hardware fully supports traditional controller options as well. And the second is the extreme prevalence of shovelware focusing on the motion controls.

As to the former sin, many Wii games offer a variety of control options. Wiimote, Wiimote+nunchuck, Classic Controller, GCN/Wavebird, etc. Others restrict the player to one option, and most of the time that option is Wiimote/nunchuck. Take Animal Crossing as an example. This is a very laid-back game, all about relaxing. But the game uses motion controls for major control functions, which really hampers the relaxation aspect of the game. It also makes it clunky to play on the couch, or lying down. It would be a simple matter to include Wavebird support. But it wasn't done. Why? Hell if I know. No reason is acceptable, though.
Nintendo is also guilty of this same crap with DS games, forcing players to use touch controls when they are clunkier and encroach upon the convenience of using the device on the go.

As to the 2nd sin...the family/everyman focus of these "controllerless" controllers attracts shovelware developers like s*** does flies (if indeed those analogies are not actually the same two things). It is sort of unavoidable, but not really. One of the things I constantly criticize consoles for (software licensing requirements) could be beneficial here. MS, Sony, and Nintendo need to learn to "just say no" to shovelware. Require games to meet a specific quality standard (and NOT a standard dictated by effing metacritic scores). This was the way of things back in the day of the SNES, etc. What the Hell is that gold Nintendo seal on there for if it isn't a standard for quality?

Both of these things will happen with Kinect and Move. They already have happened. I have said it from the beginning, to much head-shaking and naysaying among my fellow hobbyists. But look at any Kinect ad. It's littered with Wii Sports knockoffs, halfass exercise games, and other garbage no one would look at twice (hell, even once) if it didn't feature special motion controls.
And that brings us to the REAL problem:

These motion controllers are NOT about the games. They're about motion control. It is a backward and broken way to work. The idea exists, as stupid as it sounds, that anything is fun if it involves flailing around in your living room like a seizure victim. This is not true. It has been proven untrue by 5 years of Nintendo shovelware and even AAA Wii titles that are, otherwise, excellent. Motion controls sound fun at first, but get old in a HURRY. I haven't touched Wii Sports in years. Yeah, it was a blast at first. It got old. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

Another major problem is that motion controls provide ZERO feedback to the user. Gamepads and keyboards already lack a huge degree of useful feedback (though vibration and force feedback are pretty common ways of helping compensate for that just a tiny bit). But at least with a physical controller you know when you have pressed a button. At least you know which way your analog stick is pressed. Not with motion controls. You have no way of knowing if the game registered what you DID, or what it thought you did, or nothing at all. Which is what makes a lot of Wii shovelware unplayable, and what hampers the experience of legitimate games like Twilight Princess and even Metroid Corruption.
Kinect keeps showing off racing games. Terrible, horrible, bad. Mario Kart Wii is already bad enough due to the lack of auto-center (or ANY on-center indication at all) with the motion controls. Waving your hands magically in the air with no steering wheel is a recipe for vagueness. And vague control inputs do not promote a fun gaming experience.

There's a lot of talk about "real" games eventually supporting Kinect and Move. I'll believe it when it happens. There's been a demo of SOCOM using Move, and that's the only actual progress along that line I've seen. What's going to happen is 327305 tiny developers no one has ever heard of are going to shart out garbage and pile the libraries of all 3 consoles high with rubbish no one actually wants to buy.

It's not going to end well. I can't imagine paying $150 EXTRA for access to a library of sub-par titles when the "real" games of decent quality are going to continue releasing in the good old handheld gamepad format.

I gave motion controls a chance. They did not impress, and more often than not got in the way. I have no interest in paying extra money for that same experience on new consoles. At least the Wii comes with its motion controls out of the box.

^ Couldn't agree more!