Controllers have evolved over the years to suite the audience and the games or each era. Today, we have Nintendo honing the precision of their device while Microsoft is waxing lyrical of their anti-controller. Will the future of the video game controller an evolution of what has been, or a radical departure? While the Natal controller is exciting and genuinely revolutionary, MotionPlus is going to be a tough act to beat.
We get a lot of questions about the new controllers on the Wii, 360 and PS3. So after recieving a sample from Wii Games seller Moby Memory, we thought it was time to put pen to paper and share what we know about the MotionPlus add-on and the 360 Camera Controller.
Here's the best bits from our article on Game People that gives casual gamers the low down on this new technology:
Controllers have evolved over the years to suite the audience and the games or each era. Today, we have Nintendo honing the precision of their device while Microsoft is waxing lyrical of their anti-controller. Will the future of the video game controller an evolution of what has been, or a radical departure? While the Natal controller is exciting and genuinely revolutionary, MotionPlus is going to be a tough act to beat.
Microsoft recently unveiled their stereoscopic camera movement detector, codenamed Natal. This combines with technology that understands the human frame to understand the movements people are making. This means you can play games by just moving your body. The game simply detects your bodily movements, and in such high fidelity that you can play sports, draw pictures and drive cars accurately and consistently.
Rather than removing the controller they have done their best to simplify it. Styled as an unobtrusive TV remote control, the device easily nestles amongst the other control wands in the living room. It evolves the usual multi-buttoned, dual-sticked controllers into a simple sleek single-handed unit.
But this isn't a device about dumbing down the experience. At the same time it evolves the controls to add more precision and nuance that has been previously seen in the living room. The pointing provides a mouse-like analogue direction control without being bound to a desk. The accelerometers detect the player's gross movements and create a whole new grammar of interaction that is still being mined. And now, MotionPlus extends this precision by providing orientation control so the game knows which way the Wii-mote is facing.
Nintendo have already proven their motion controls work in the market, and MotionPlus just builds on this. Microsoft has more to prove, and need their own Wii-sports, the one simple game that demonstrates how simple, easy and intuitive their technology is. They need to do this before showing complex interactions like Lionhead's Milo character. It's still true in gaming that the success of any hardware is dependent on the software it runs.
Read the full Family Gaming article for more details, and let us know what you think about these developments.
