Playstation Move

Motion controls. I'll  be the first to criticize them and the last to take them in with open, unquestioning arms. When the Wii shipped some three years ago, I was excited, ecstatic even, with the concept of another innovative Nintendo system; I was and am a huge fan of what the N64 did for gaming and what it brought to the table. But what got me about the Wii was not stellar graphics or a great and promised catalog of games - neither of which ever came to fruition - but the one innovation that, seemingly, promised to change the atmosphere of gaming: motion control.

To be honest, I never bought a Wii. I was holding out for Sony and the PS3, but I played the Wii every chance I got and came very close, my hand reaching into my back pocket to my wallet at Wal-Mart, to buying one.

The reason this never happened, why I don't have a Wii sitting in my room, but a PS3 in my entertainment center, is that it just got boring. For me, at least, the motion controls didn't, in the long run, make up for the shoddy library and the egregiously embarrassing visuals of the Wii. On certain games - Wii Sports, Red Steel - the latency was bearable, yet in others - World at War, Smash Bro. Brawl, it was frustrating at best.

Quickly, the novelty wore off. And not just for me, but for many gamers. It was fun while it lasted, but motion control just wasn't ready, the research and technology wasn't where it needed to be. Nintendo has made it this far catering to the family-centric gamer, not the hardcore, more critical gamer.

And that's what it seems Microsoft and, more importantly, Sony are trying not to do - leave the hardcore gamer out in the rain. At this point, I haven't heard much positivity regarding Natal - information has leaked that developers are having trouble with Natal, that Natal isn't as responsive or as able to recognize images as was originally touted. But those are all, truly, rumors. The point here is that Playstation Move is the only real pertinent and promising motion controller right now.

I'm excited because of the possibilities - one-to-one- latency, backwards compatibility with older PS3 games through downloadable patches, etc. I'm nervous because of the risk - PS3 could trod the path of the Wii and become old hat within the first few months to a year.

Even being a huge critic of motion control and seeing it more as a gaming augmentation rather than control within itself, at this point I see the potential in the technology. Sony could truly make inroads into the the technology's future. I can see the Playstation Move, with all of its advantages such as one-to-one latency, backwards compatibility, more pertinent titles and titles that appeal to a larger gamer-community, laying the foundation for motion control standards and future projects.  

 We'll just have to wait until E3 and more emphatically, Fall 2010 to truly find out. Maybe, motion control will become more than a novelty and child's play. Maybe motion control will defy its critics and become necessary and wanted, not just a cumbersome periphery.