Square Enix President Has Doubts About Motion Controls
Sony and Microsoft may be pinning a lot of their hopes on new motion control systems but Square Enix [http://www.square-enix.com/na/] President Yoichi Wada is somewhat less optimistic, saying their ultimate impact "may be small."
After a few years of watching Nintendo rule the roost with the Wii [http://www.wii.com], both Sony and Microsoft finally bought into the idea that there might be something to all this motion-controlled business after all. Both companies unveiled their own motion-sensing systems at the 2009 E3 and appear to be betting heavily that these new controllers will play a prominent role in attracting a new generation of gamers.
In an interview with the Financial Times [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/486a3a6c-a602-11de-8c92-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1], however, Wada sounded somewhat less stoked about the idea than his console-making counterparts. "Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine," he said. "Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function."
The impact of the devices could be greater, he said, if a solid selection of compelling games is released for them, but noted that designing games that use motion controls is "quite difficult."
Still, he did offer some praise for Project Natal [http://www.xbox.com/projectnatal], Microsoft's motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360. "As a user interface it's fantastic and I think it will become standard," he said.
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Sony and Microsoft may be pinning a lot of their hopes on new motion control systems but Square Enix [http://www.square-enix.com/na/] President Yoichi Wada is somewhat less optimistic, saying their ultimate impact "may be small."
After a few years of watching Nintendo rule the roost with the Wii [http://www.wii.com], both Sony and Microsoft finally bought into the idea that there might be something to all this motion-controlled business after all. Both companies unveiled their own motion-sensing systems at the 2009 E3 and appear to be betting heavily that these new controllers will play a prominent role in attracting a new generation of gamers.
In an interview with the Financial Times [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/486a3a6c-a602-11de-8c92-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1], however, Wada sounded somewhat less stoked about the idea than his console-making counterparts. "Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine," he said. "Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function."
The impact of the devices could be greater, he said, if a solid selection of compelling games is released for them, but noted that designing games that use motion controls is "quite difficult."
Still, he did offer some praise for Project Natal [http://www.xbox.com/projectnatal], Microsoft's motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360. "As a user interface it's fantastic and I think it will become standard," he said.
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