PlayStation Move Shows That Sony Doesn’t Get It
People were not very optimistic at last years E3 when Sony showed off the unnamed motion controller. It’s been almost a year since then and we are just now getting more information about it, information that does not exactly fill me with confidence. The Move might be a pretty cool device, but it’s not going to do what Sony desperately wants it to do: get the Nintendo market. The GDC unveiling of the name and fresh information shows that Sony wants to get the casual market that bought so many Wiis that until recently you couldn’t even find them in the stores. The problem is, they are missing all of what made Nintendo successful.
As you can see, the Move is clearly meant to be like the Wii Remote, but there are some differences. There is the obvious giant ball on the end that can change colors, which is a decent idea that could work out well in some games, but seems fairly silly. The button layout is a lot different too, but the main difference is that it is not as easily recognizable as a Wii Remote. A Wii Remote looks like a remote control, people know the basics of operating a television remote control, so a Wii Remote is much less intimidating to a non-gamer. Despite what gamers want to think, people are still intimidated by standard controllers, and until this generation more and more buttons were added over time.
This is a minor issue, as it is not too complicated, but it is a slight barrier. The sub-controller is a much bigger problem.
Why do I now have two X buttons and two O buttons? Why would you even do that? Who at Sony thought it was a good idea to have two buttons have the same picture on them? Do they do the same thing? If so, why are there two of them? Do they do different things?
The real problem isn’t the confusing buttons, it is that Sony is showing that all it can do is try to copy the Wii and hope for the best. It’s just a nunchuck that connects to the system via bluetooth rather than connect to the wii remote via a cable. This handicaps multiplayer as well, as only 7 bluetooth devices can be connected to the PlayStation 3 at one time. They can probably get away with this though, the sub-controller likely wouldn’t lend itself to 4 player games anyway.
Sony isn’t doing anything too wrong here. They’re doing some pretty stupid things, but the issue isn’t so much with the technology but what they hope to accomplish with it. They seem to be operating under the assumption that somehow Move will be just like the Wii. It’s so obviously a Wii knock-off and the sports game makes it even more obvious. The only conclusion to come to is that they want to be the Wii. You may disagree and say that Sony is not trying to be the Wii here, but when their controller is almost exactly the Wii’s and it comes out with the exact type of game that the Wii did, it’s hard to think otherwise.
I don’t think Sony understands why the Wii is successful. It’s not just motion controller + sports mini-games = lots of cash. It’s much more than that. First off, the Wii is tied to the Nintendo brand-name, and even though PlayStation was synonymous with videogames for many last generation, people equate Nintendo with video games much more strongly. X-box and PlayStation became regular words in the vernacular, but Nintendo is the name that random people know. People know Mario, people remember the NES, and that brand identity among the general public is something that Sony can’t capture. Grandma knows what a PlayStation is, but she doesn’t know what it is.
More importantly, the price point helped the Wii. The Wii came out at $250 with a game and its motion controller; the PlayStation 3 alone is $300 right now. The Move is going to require a lot of hardware to work with most games. Some games require a PlayStation Eye, some games require a sub-controller(they really need an actual name for that), and some games require both. Sony says that a sub-controller can be used in place of a regular Move, but because of the lower button count and lack of a giant ball, I’m guessing support for that won’t be too high on all but simple minigames. Sony says they’ll be putting out a bundle including an Eye, a Move, and a game for “under $100.” This “under $100″ will likely be $99 or maybe if they’re generous $80. They have not announced pricing on the Move or the sub-controller at this time(hopefully we won’t have an E3 pricing announcement as bad as the PSP Go Price announcement last year), but the Move will likely be in the $40 range. So you have the $300 PlayStation 3 and the $100-$120 for one complete set of controllers. Parents are not going to be buying this over the now $200 Wii, it’s just to large of a price difference.
The sports game that Sony revealed is the biggest proof that they have no idea of what they are doing. It’s an obvious attempt to recreate the Wii Sports phenomenon, except it’s not going to work. Wii Sports got all of the attention it did because it was new. When this comes out, it will have been 4 years since Wii Sports, and the only new thing that the Move adds is higher sensitivity. Problem is, Nintendo already stole that thunder with Wii Sports Resort. The Today Show is not going to play with the PlayStation Move, they’ve already seen all it has to offer. The only ones that it can appeal to at this point are hardcore gamers, and they are already feeling motion-control fatigue.
Natal will be on the Today Show though. Why? Because it’s new and different. It’s not just an obvious cash-in on Nintendo’s success; it is attempting to do something that hasn’t been done in the console space: remove the controller. New, different, and above all: accessible – that is what gets the attention of non-gamers. That is the direction Sony should have gone, not copying Nintendo, not copying Microsoft, but coming up with something original. Yes, there are original ideas in the Move, and it does look like it could do some very interesting things. The problem is that the whole thing is an obvious, desperate attempt to get the market that Nintendo has. And that’s just not going to work.
If The Today show has become the barometer for video game achievement, I’m very disappointed in the future world. I sincerely hope you don’t think that being on that show is a stamp of success on any product.
Sony and Microsoft are definitely trying to capitalize on the success of motion-controlled gaming– but that doesn’t mean that Nintendo is some amazing paradigm for being “the first” to send it to market. Its obviously a large and important industry trend, so you can hardly blame other console companies when they try and move it forward (no pun intended) as well.
Yes– I do think Sony is trying to move it forward. They’re expanding their console’s capabilities and challenging their developers. They’ve presented the world with something old, something new– their own creation. Since when did change have to be so radical as to be on the scale of the Natal? As I remember correctly you weren’t fond of the Natal when it was announced either.
To be quite honest, I very much doubt if Microsoft or Sony are really going into this motion-controlled games business thinking “lets steal Nintendo’s market share!” Its much more likely that both companies have realized they have the only HD consoles on the market, and that no HD motion control peripherals or games have been made. Its infinitely more likely they are competing with one another, and not Nintendo.
As always, I think its far too early (with far too little information) to be saying yes or no on the Move. Particularly when the complaints you can come up with are that you think it looks weird, don’t understand the button schematic and you think it sucks.
I think it is very apparent from how the Move has been handled that it is trying to capitalize on Nintendo’s success. Also I should have cut down the beginning section, my point isn’t so much that the Move sucks, it’s that it is not going to be a runaway success like the Wii and everything Sony has done suggests that they are trying to make it one.
No, I wasn’t too fond of the Natal, but my point is more about whether or not it can be successful in a wider context.
Im just gonna say dont quit your day job cause this is trash. Using the today show as a barometer for videogames what a joke.
Martin said:
Im just gonna say dont quit your day job cause this is trash. Using the today show as a barometer for videogames what a joke.
I believe that using The Today Show as a barometer is appropriate. It shows total market penetration. I dont believe “the move” will ever achieve that level of penetration because it offers nothing new. Its a Barometer of success and exposure. Its an idication of mass appeal. You probably dont have a day job, so you wouldnt understand.
I agree it won’t be a runaway success like the Wii, but how you get your info about Sony’s strategy baffles me…If you actually had money vested in the Sony brand name as millions do, you would realize that their presentations to shareholders demonstrate that the Move is there to penetrate the market and compete with the Wii as right now no one is competing directly with the Wii. Sure the Move is a semi-ripoff although this tech was in development since 2004…so can’t really call it a copy-cat, perhaps nintendo saw Sony’s tech demo on the PS2 and said…hey we could kick some ass if we take that idea and make it our own.
Anyways, SOny is trying to get a small percentage of the market share, similar to Apple vs. PC market shares. Apple knows they can’t compete with the PC market, but they can penetrate the market and take a bite of the apple, so to speak, themselves.
I think the Move will help bring casual gamers to the PS3, or at least boost the family friendly titles on the system. It does add the Z axis which is a huge advancement over the Wii. Being able to differentiate left, right, forward, backwards, up, down is HUGE! Wii can only do 2 axis. This is what will let the Move be adopted by Hardcore gamers. Some people that want to try something new on their FPS’s, Action games, etc. Something the Wii cannot do properly as it isn’t 1:1 and cannot tell where you are in space.
So I think your article is extremely premature and misguided. Check Shareholder press releases and forecasts for tech before forming an absurd opinion. If Sony wanted to make this their only console seller we would see them abandon the old DS3 controller, which will never happen. See if Wii was able to come out with a Core controller for the hardcore gamer and had HD then PS3/360 would be dead in the water…too bad Nintendo wasn’t in this race for Next-gen, they just knew the Casual market wasn’t being tapped into.
I don’t agree with this article. First how is Sony being a copy cat if they were first in full body motion gaming, and were the first to really start on developing a motion controlling system with their eyetoy? How is Natal new? I don’t see it anywhere near new, the eyetoy was capable of doing what Natal has been shown to do so far, all the tech demos, and games for eyetoy, are basically what Natal is, all of Sony’s testing into a new camera with inferred. Also, Playstation Move, to me at least, seems to be the best motion control system to be released, with super pin point accuracy, and the power of the PS eye to track the controls, and your entire body. Move is the only motion system that seems amazing, and is able to deliver hardcore experiences, and its a lot cheaper than i would thought for the bundle, as i expect natal to be expensive, and the Wii was cheap in like 3 different ways, as i own one, and every time i see Move i get disappointed playing my Wii.
Here are the PS eyetoy tech demos, and games, going back as far as 2004, and was shared to the public :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpNdkm9s8AY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V6fPP9DiBw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PtoxKDcCXc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzNJwk9Z4ds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4KJFIviHIc&feature=related
An interview:
http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040326/interview-marks_01.shtml
Interesting info:
http://www.n4g.com/events_e32009/News-348053.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCEyHiLxuC8&feature=player_embedded
and PS eye tech demos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c34SiWx8rKo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoH1IF5NdSQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80VWGjWYWd4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBA1uWSDYjk
So, Sony was first in this concept of motion camera based gaming, and a full gaming motion controller system, as they said Move was actually going to come out for PS2 but they didn’t have the technology to do it at that time, and idea that was needed to be done in the future.
If PS move is called a copy from the Wii, than Natl is just as much a copy of eyetoy.
It’ll do good, I guess, think of multiplatform games, that’s what’s gonna help Sony, only thing missing, is knowing how to market it!!!!
Yeah what Sony is doing with the Move is the exact same thing Nintendo has been doing with the Wii. But Natal and Wii are doing is just an advancment of what Sony did with the Eye Toy over half a decade ago. But that what’s bussiness is about, using ideas that work for other companies and trying to make them work for yours.
I don’t think Sony is trying to take all of Nintendo’s casual audience; because they know that’s not going to happen. They are trying to take Nintendo’s Hardcore audience that Nintendo has neglected this generation, while trying to reassure their own hardcore audience that this tech can be implemented into the FPS’s and other action type games, that’s where the Socom 4 demo came into play at their GDC press conference. This is why I believe the PS Move will be more of a sucess than most people think.
clearly written by a fanboy
I agree with Devarrea. I have to ask the author of this article. Did the Wii have Bioshock, Fallout 3, GTA 4, Farcry 2, Resident Evil 5? Did you ever play those game? No, Nintendo has never thought of the hardcore audience. That’s why many Wii owners bought PS3 or the 360 for that. Because the Wii didn’t have any of the game I mention. Nintendo ignored the hardcore audience.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/scee-wii-owners-will-upgrade-to-ps3
http://www.gamestooge.com/2010/03/11/sony-hopes-wii-owners-move-to-ps3/
I do agree that it had some good one like Resident Evil, House of the Dead: OVerkill, No more Heroes, and Madworld. I’m also glad to see Nintendo was able to get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the Wii. But I don’t see any other good game on the Wii beside the first party like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. oh by thw way, Didn’t Project Natal kind of act similarly to Playstation 2′s Eyetoy last generation? I don’t see why Sony can do a controller similar to the Wii. IF Project Natal can borrow tech from PS2′s Eyetoy, then why can’t the PS3 take something from the Wii. If you say that, then shouldn’t Littlebigplanet creator get lawsuit because the gameplay look like Super Mario Bros.
The PS3 has many thing that the Wii couldn’t do like HD gaming and playing Blu-ray and DVD movie. The PS3 is not only a gaming console, but it’s also a multimedia console and I’m proud to have a PS3, and I’m planning to get the Wii in the future also because I grew up loving Nintendo.
[...] Many Smacks To The Back Of The Head Does It Take? PlayStation Move Shows That Sony Doesn't Get It – Insert Disc ∴ A great article with no (or at least, relatively little) bias, explaining why [...]
Also didn’t Wii Fit and Wii play kind of look similar to these PS2 game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyetoy:_Play (this was PS2′s Wii Play)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EyeToy:_Kinetic (PS2′s Wii fit)
So according to your logic, if the Playstation Move copied off Wii, then Nintendo’s Wii Fit and Wii Play copied off Sony PS2′s Eyetoy: Play, and Eyetoy: Kinetic.
lets start with tech facts i don’t want to really but its clear Sony are lying and wii is better im not spamming or trolling this is engineering FACT….
move 300 degrees tracking max via camera plus LOTS OF LAG
wii motion plus 1600 degrees tracking over 5x more than move with vastly less lag
sub controller zero motion play it has no motion
nunchuck 300 degrees motion tracking
sony rely s on cameras and light bulbs = lag reported up-to 6 frames every 30
wii can be almost entirely lag free
camera based motion is maxed out at 300 degrees you will never get any more
wii motion plus is not only 5 x more its all internal at your hand in the controls a camera doesn’t need to see a thing
camera tracking will be very easy to interfere with other light sources etc
wii has a genius yet simple button lay out and the wii remote is also a side on controller
sonys move button lay out is strange and not thought out and there’s way way to many buttons on sub controller
camera tracking doesn’t = mouse like fps aim i just don’t see it working like wiis ir pointer mouse
moves seems like a poor mans wii control mixed with some natal its not well thought out its as if sony tried every trick in the book to copy nintendo with out getting into patent trouble
it resulted in a crap controller
nintendo dropped camera based motion with wands and they said no to natal like tech too
WHY BECAUSE IT LAGS ITS RESTRICTIVE AND ITS EXPENSIVE
ps3 motion control userbase may hit say 10 million BY THAT TIME wii USERBASE HITS 110 MILLION
is it so hard to understand
nintendo 3DS coming soon sony you are fuuuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkeedddd
The reason that the sony move is ideal is because one sony is a hardcore oriented system so motion control plus hardcore is already something that the wii doesn’t have. Secondly motion control which is gimmicky is an option on the ps3. They’re still making plenty of controller games and that’s not stopping. Wii on the other hand lives and dies by its motion controlls. Tired of the gimmick and you only have a wii? too bad buddy. You’re screwed. If you only have a ps3 and you get tired of the gimmick. No problem you can just go back to playing socom, killzone, uncharted 1 and 2, little big planet, resistance 1 and 2 and other games.
Playstation is the best gaming console that i have owned. Me and my brother are addicted in playing games on Playstation..-’
The reason that the sony move is ideal is because one sony is a hardcore oriented system so motion control plus hardcore is already something that the wii doesn’t have. Secondly motion control which is gimmicky is an option on the ps3. They’re still making plenty of controller games and that’s not stopping. Wii on the other hand lives and dies by its motion controlls. Tired of the gimmick and you only have a wii? too bad buddy. You’re screwed. If you only have a ps3 and you get tired of the gimmick. No problem you can just go back to playing socom, killzone, uncharted 1 and 2, little big planet, resistance 1 and 2 and other games.
ITS A HARD-CORE MACHINE IM GOING TO BURST YOUR ENTIRE CONCEPT OF REALITY
THERES NO SUCH THING AS HARD-CORE OR A HARD-CORE MACHINE WERE DID YOU GET THAT FROM = “”"”"THE INDUSTRY”"”"
ITS CALLED A MARKETING LIE AND NINTENDO GOING CASUAL = FALLACY
PLEASE SEEK MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE IF YOU BELIEVE ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE ABOVE CAPS
WIIBOY101/SEAN MALSTROM
Its funny how anti-Sony this article is. First off Sony has been working on this tech since 2000, the PS2 Eyetoy was the first version of it. They learned alot and improved the tech, as shown at E3 last year. Sony actually had a LIVE DEMO! MS had recorded demos and some private access demos to some in the media. Sony’s demo was actually an obvious success and proved their tech….Its so funny how butt hurt people think if they write a story, that it will change the truth.