Ever since Micro$oft and Sony finally noticed that the Wii is outselling both of their consoles combined, more than 2:1, they decided that they should jump on the bandwagon of “motion control”. The problem with this is that while their systems are being heralded for how amazingly creative and innovative they are.. they do pretty much the same thing as the Wii. What “hardcore” gamers bashed the Wii for was the same thing that they’re praising Micro$oft and Sony for now, so it’s really a silly addition to the console war.
While “project Natal” has impressed the hell out of everyone by turning your 360 into a Wii, Sony was trailing the rear of showing off motion control. Now they’ve brought things to a new level with “Playstation Move”, their motion controller, displayed here:
As you can see, the innovative controller design “borrows” from the Wii controller design and improves it immensely with its… oh wait, I’m sorry, that’s the wrong photo. I get it mixed up since it looks so much alike from this one:
There we go, the Playstation Move. Wow, look at that, and it’s wireless too! One of the things that I noticed about previous gaming generations is that the general look and feel of each console was very different. 3D on an N64 and 3D on a Playstation felt very different, there were fewer game engines and they seemed to try to stick by console, cross-platform games were almost unheard of and even controllers felt so profoundly different.
Since then, ergonomics have taken over. There aren’t arguments over if the 360′s or the PS3′s controller is more comfortable anymore and there are so many cross-platform games and copies of games that it really doesn’t make a difference if you have a 360 or a PS3 now. Hell, even being brand-loyal is pointless between the two. This is where the Wii is set apart, Nintendo decided to do something different, try out a different market. After the financial failure that the Gamecube was, they were going for broke. It worked, and now the other two have decided to jump on it.
As far as console generations go, we’re probably looking at one of the longest right now. Sony has stated many times that they’re going for their whole 10-year-lifespan thing. Blu-ray is just seeping its way in now, and shows no sign of another behemoth to replace it anytime soon, and we’re witnessing something with Sony and Nintendo and their handhelds that’s rather unique. An upgrade every year, major ones as well. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the two applied these kinds of upgrade tactics to their home-consoles (which would eliminate the console generation race altogether and start to bring consoles to the level of upgrade capacity as PCs).
With the three console manufacturers beginning to simply copy off of one another or re-do old ideas, becoming excited over any of them is going to get more and more difficult. Now sure, this article wasn’t much about the Playstation Move… but if you know what a Wii controller does, you know what this controller does too.
–Jeff “DanyLektro”