The Wii has introduced motion controlled gaming to the masses, and showed that you don't need the latest and greatest hardware to succeed in the gaming market. As expected, Microsoft and Sony are trying to get in on Nintendo's action, announcing motion control devices of their own. At the Tokyo Game Show this week, we got another look at the PlayStation 3 motion controller, and even got the first bunch of associated game announcements. It seems that motion controlled gaming is going to be the next big thing.

But is motion controlled gaming really the way to go?

Motion Sickness

'Twas the wee hours of June 3rd, and Microsoft's press conference was in full swing. My partner and I had awoken early to catch the show, hoping that a steady diet of sugary treats and popular brand name energy drinks would keep us awake through the next two hours of executive posturing and self-back patting. The glee we had from seeing new games was quickly dashed by Kudo Tsunoda and Project Natal. There was a repeat performance the next day with the PlayStation motion controller hogging the stage for an hour or so in an excruciatingly dull demonstration. The message beaming through my beloved router was that motion control is hot, and everyone wants in. Everyone but me, it would seem.

A couple of months down the track, the smoke and mirrors have cleared and people are starting to see what's really going on. People know that Milo was scripted rubbish, and Kudo's infamous "Bam!" gave us all a good laugh. They're still serious about introducing these things – the businessmen have seen the success of the Wii and want a slice of the action, with little consideration of exactly how they're going to get there, or what it is that has made the Wii successful. But what can you expect from a company whose strategy for entering the video game market was to throw cash at something until it stuck ($US6 billion in losses before they turned a quarterly profit!).

The Wii market they all want to cash in on is beginning to cool off. Hardware sales, though solid, are down significantly. Software sales aren't exactly setting the world on fire either – a quick look at any region's Wii sales chart will show that people are still buying things that came out in April and May of last year. That shouldn't surprise anyone, since the majority of their releases this year have been tarted up GameCube ports – good games, but they're old hat. Wii Sports Resort, the Trojan horse for the Wii Motion Plus, has been successful, but not nearly up to the standard of Wii Fit and Wii Play. In fact, there haven't been any new games that support Motion Plus since Wii Sports Resort was released.


Choose your (motion controlled) destiny!
After two years experience with the Wii, I can say with confidence that many developers still don't have a damn clue what to do when it comes to implementing decent motion control into their games. The games that fail are the ones that rely too heavily on motion control for every action – there's an instant facepalm whenever I'm playing a game that uses the Nunchuck's extremely limited movement abilities for a complex action. The games are becoming increasingly shallow as a result of what we're supposed to think is greater accessibility.

What happens when you remove the tactile experience for motion control and rely on camera detection like Natal? Judging from Mark's hands on look with the device, you end up jumping and leaning around like a dufus. Frankly, if I wanted to jump around in front of a camera like a moron, I'd have been auditioning for Big Brother when it was on, rather than playing video games. Not every game needs to be an active experience – I don't need to get out of my chair and use every muscle in my body every time I'm playing a game. The core gaming consumer is likely playing a game as a means to relax or unwind after a day at the salt mines – it's not going to work.

From the practical applications of Natal to date, nobody seems to have shown off anything that's not too far removed from the PS2's EyeToy software. Microsoft has boasted that Natal is capable of all sorts of fancy crap, but nobody's really doing anything to show it off. How about something with the object and voice recognition technology? One can only hope that the heightened cost of development on the Xbox 360 and PS3 prevents us from getting HD versions of Petz and Imagine and other shovelware designed for the fabled "expanded audience".


Is this the sort of stuff you want crapping up your PS3 and 360?
Motion control does have its positives, as anyone who has looked into head tracking technology can testify. For racing gamers, that's an exciting development but do you really want to play with an imaginary wheel and pedals? We need to find a point where we can have fancy technology like headtracking, but keep a controller in our hands, and that's not really something Microsoft has been pushing for with Natal. This is meant to be their big plan to keep the Xbox 360 chugging along for another five years – I can see that maybe a few years down the line, a harmony might be found between standard controller based gaming and motion control, but the way Natal is positioned, it seems to be leaning towards a more jarring transition.

Of course, the concern about a motion control takeover assumes that technology such as Natal and the PlayStation motion controller catch on. While the plan is to have Natal bundled with the Xbox 360 from late next year, or even positioned as a successor based on Xbox 360 technology, it's still an add-on peripheral, and it's apparently going to be a pricey one at that. Same goes for the PlayStation doohickey – you need a PSEye and the wand, and knowing Sony's peripheral pricing, I wouldn't get my hopes up about it coming in under $150. Few add-ons or significantly altered peripherals have been successful – the DualShock arguably became the standard PlayStation controller later in the system's life, and the Famicom Disk System and PC Engine Super CD Drive were both quite successful, in Japan at least. Natal could end up being the next 32X.