Sony PlayStation Move “I like to Move it, Move it." Reel 2 Reel paraphrased in 1994 exactly how I feel about the PS3's new motion controlled system. PlayStation Move motion controller The motion controller is the main Move add-on Are we still embarrassed by so-called 'active gaming'? I know I keep the curtains closed during my nightly Wii Fit …
I tell you what, why don't you nip down to Kmart and buy yourself a blue light bulb and a cheap camera. You've probably already got bluetooth in your phone or something so you have that already. Just put them all together and there you go, Playstation Move on the cheap! No need to buy the real stuff at all!
Development costs money.
Not to mention having to develop the hardware around all the patents Nintendo and others have on the motion technology. This is why the Go looks so ridiculous.
I suppose you think a CD should be 2p since that's all it costs to make? but forgetting wages, recording costs, promotion costs, wages for everyone involved and so on.
The patents relating to this tech (and some related to Kinect) were filed by Sony as far back as 10 years ago. In the patent you can even see the diagrams that show what looks pretty much like the move controller. This was years before the launch of the Wii. As for Nintendo I don't know if they even have any patents related to the Wii motion control since they licenced the tech from other companies.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/sony-playstation-move-tear-down-report-717793
PlayStation Move also "contains many of components found in today's smartphones: a processor, accelerometer, gyroscope, Bluetooth transmitter, vibrating motor, and even a MEMS compass," notes iFixit, adding that: "It's an amazing amount of tech for the money."
The problem with this (and with the Wii), is whilst it's a great social game, when it comes to getting serious it's not the type of game you will play for hours on your own (or online).
I our household, if we have friends over and want to put a console on then 99% of the time it's the wii. If I want play a game then it's generally the 360.
As your review is focused mainly around the party games, then it's hard to know if this will break that barrier.
Paris, because she likes to party with alien sex toys
Use the PS3 camera already on the PS3 Party Chat (yes Xbox owners, despite what you read somewhere, there is Video Party Chat on PS3). So all I need to 2x controllers, which makes it a very nice intro price of £60.
It's also worth mentioning that you can download all the individual sport champions games from PSN.. So you don't need to pickup the starter pack if you already have the camera.
As for Kinect, it seems like an Eye Toy, the difference of course, is that Eye Toy has realistic goals and thus worked, Kinect is doomed for tech failure (and hopefully thus commercial failure too) due to it's unrealistic goals.
...it doesn't provide the necessary depth of control.
Take the recent Forza demo. They had removed the acceleration controls and the car moved automatically, essentially ruining the game. The players only job is to 'steer', turning the whole thing into a traffic dodging exercise.
Sorry Microsoft, but you can keep it!
If you're going to showcase your fancy new controller technology, show something else and don't use a game that you have effectively broken.
I'm not denying that Kinect is interesting technology, and no doubt it has some very useful applications, but I can't see it being a great success at this stage.
As for Playstation Move, well Sony are just playing catch-up. I can't blame them though - the Wii-mote has been a phenomenal success. I might get Move eventually, but my PS3 is never going to replace the Wii.
I agree it maybe ok for PS3 owners but will it make people buy it.
£250 for the console plus
2 controller £30 plus the motion item at £25 each plus camera at £20 (with pack)
Since you always need 2.
thats a massive £380 investment prior to games. no way that will make people buy a PS3 if they have a WII or xbox 360.
i'm a hardcore gamer and I have yet to buy a PS3 (have all other plus decent gaming PC) and this will not make be want to buy it the latency alone would stop it being useful to harcore FPS online. SO that leaves party play already heavily controlled by Wii at half the cost.
Sony again mistake tech and cost thinking tech will outway the negative of the cost, plus it looses the plot on the look. very un-ps3 looking wand.
Then your not a hardcore gamer. Anyone that truely considers themselves a gamer will already have a PS3. How else do you get to play generation defining titles like Uncharted 1&2 and Killzone and the like? You don't you miss out...
Congratulations, your fanboyism means you are the one losing out....
It seems MS really hurt you at one point didn't they (or your re-directing some bitter anger at them!).
I'm not so sure its an "unrealistic goal", it might be for you but a company with as much money as MS? And I certainly wouldn't wish anything to be a commercial failure - where something commercialy fails, so do peoples jobs! Harsh man, .... harsh. I hope your employer never commercialy fails...
As for the Move and Kinnect, this is great! PS3 & X360, all jumping off the launch pad the Wii created. Which one will succeed? Who knows! (Oh I'm sure some of you think you do!) This is going to be fun to be part of and enjoy :)
The real future of gaming is just starting to take off!
I've been waiting for a review of this on a site I trust. Having played the Wii many times I have also been frustrated by its lack of accuracy, even with the "Motion Plus"(tm) controller the console lets itself down, not to mention the dated graphics and some very tired-looking game franchises.
Recently I also had the opportunity to have a go on the Microsoft Kinect system as it was being demo'd at my place of work. Although I should point out for fairness that it is not yet the finished retail product and subject to bug-fixing.
If Kinect can be described as anything then that thing would be very clever. It can recognise people so that it knows who is playing (I can't speak for how accurate it would be if you gained/lost a few pounds) and can recognise the position of your limbs without any controller. However, while it was quite good fun in games which encompassed general movement, anything that needed more than a slight degree of accuracy was somewhat disappointing. Certainly on the system we played on, it showed even when just using your hand to select a button on the screen that it jiggled and moved slightly rather than being steady like my hand (I don't believe I had the alcoholic shakes that day....). We also saw that in some cases, perhaps based on clothing (one guy was wearing all black) it didn't properly recognise limb positions.
Of course, some of this may be fixed or improved by launch, but I still don't see how it can compete on an accuracy basis without the benefit of a motion sensitive controller to back up the image-based tracking.
For me, this means that I will gravitate towards the Move as I think the lack of accuracy may limit the applications of Kinect. However, if I am proved wrong upon the full Kinect release then things could always change.
And it's the laughing stock of the office (our office at least). The latest hardware rev turned up about 6 weeks back, and it's still a utter joke, it's really laggy even basic API testing, let alone trying to use it in a game, and it has serious (and unfixable) registration issues due to the resolution drop Microsoft had to give it to make it affordable (and for the Xbox to be able to perform the image processing near realtime). It promises way too much, there is no way on earth it can deliver anything more than a small update on what PS2 EyeToy was offering 8 years back.
Move all the way. We have 3x move titles in development, and it's all going very well indeed. The Sony APIs are stable and well documented and integrate seamlessly into their existing API classes and system services, it's quite trivial to add move support, as long as your game is the type that can benefit from it.
It sorta explains why MAG is getting a Move update within the month, as is Heavy Rain (which I am a big fan of), I think both titles will demonstrate very nicely how versatile Sony's new controller is.
I though the *big* difference was the Kinect has 2 cameras (and mics) compared to the single one of the eye toy - hence it can see and hear in a 3D space.
Peter Molyneux has spoken really highly about about Kinect - even at TED he's been saying this is the next big thing in gaming (citing what appears to be AI enablement of the XBOX). That said, the Wikipedia article on him says he has a reputation for oversellng future game capabilities.
So - 2 cameras and mics don't help - or - Microsoft have messed up in the implementation to allow developers to gain the benefit ?
Kinect is trying to infer a wireframe representation of a person(s) from a 2D image and a depth sensor. It's going to be compute expensive to do and even then it is never going to be perfect or precise because it's trying to work off limited inputs. If someone puts their hands behind their backs, the software is going to have to guess. If someone moves too fast for the camera or a mote of dust passes over the camera lens, it's going to have to guess. etc. To counter this, they'll probably have to dampen the inputs, but that introduces lag. In the non-optimal conditions in the average home it's going to be laggy and probably still glitchy.
The live demos shown so far would bear that out - I was watching one on YouTube last night where there was literally a second's worth of lag between a girl jumping and her counterpart avatar in a rafting game. I realise that the software in demos might be preproduction quality but the thing is only 6 weeks from release so it hardly bodes well for the final product.
My original PS3 packed in recently so I've ordered a Move & Slim bundle seeing as I had to buy a replacement anyway. I haven't received them yet but my thoughts are that some games will really benefit from the controls but most won't.
Just like the Wii motion control will work best when there is a 1:1 or obvious mapping between what you do with your controller and what happens in the game. So sword swing will work great if your in-game avatar copies your moves, but it will be balls if it maps onto some generic swipe hi / lo style action (like Red Steel). A game that tracks you in real time will be great, but a game that waits for you to proscribe some action before responding with be awful.
And games that rely on gestures such as drawing a wavy line or a circle or a squiggle to do some action should be cast into the pits of hell. Abstract gestures suck so badly.
I have to wonder how things will fair between Move & Kinect over christmas. I have no doubt which is the more practical and accurate system, but sometimes reality doesn't favour the best solution. Perhaps both will sink into relative obscurity once the initial fanfare passes.
So it comes out today...What games have been released with it? Anybody know?
I've got Kinect pre-ordered, the thing putting me off PS Move is that I bought the PS Eye ages ago and there was no support for it, which seems to happen with the PS3.
The Six Axis motion sensing was a flop and can't remember the last time i've seen a game on the PS3 that uses it.
This looks good, and Kinect seems closer to what the EyeToy / PSEye is. The main decider won't be the accessories themselves but the software.
It was lack of decent software the EyeToy / PS Eye didn't do that well. Luckily the PS Eye has been 'recycled' in a way and used with Move, making it cheap for us PS Eye owners to get in on it.
... the video on this article shows you a trick on how to fit it on top of the TV without worrying about it falling off ( http://kotaku.com/5626933/how-to-mount-that-playstation-eye-camera-with-minimal-fuss )
I am currently waiting for a FPS to try with the PS Move, I really wish to see if this controller will be able to replace the PC mouse. I love the consoles since they cost far less then constantly upgrading my PC and at the same time they always play the games in maximum settings without giving me any problems. The only complain I always had about the console was the lack of mouse support... hopefully this controller will fix that.
I was of the understanding it uses the standard PlayStation Eye webcam which in turn uses the size of the orb at the top of the wand to determine the distance from the camera.
Surely the PlayStation Eye can't be said to be 3D as it does not have a second camera and does not use stereoscopic vision to determine the distance of the wand.
It works.. It senses depth of field using the size of the orb. The orb glows different colours depending on background colours and the colours of the room around it. (It changes the colour glow to achieve best contrast against the background and other players).
It's also got Bluetooth, Accelerometers, Digital Compass and other tricks, it's rather a complex bit of kit for £30. I know this will upset the idiots that think it's just a wand with a light (cornz 1)
Got 2 controllers on the way into work, cant wait to get home.
Have about 5 games already that patched to work with it, which is great!
Cant wait to try Resident Evil 5 and Heavy Rain later.
The PSN mini golf and bowling games got patched too, never liked the controls on them so look forward to giving them another go.
If we want family entertainment the kids can play the wii I already blew $500 on (accessories cost as much as system which is why Sony wants a cut). When I game I do it to veg on the couch. If I want exercise I go to the park for free. This might be worth it for those without a WII but I fail to see the pointing of blowing more cash just to make my PS3 a super WII. Now that said they better not ruin big titles going forward (Killzone3, Socom 4 (already delayed due to stupid Move)) by overempathsizing the gimick that is the Move.
It's brilliant. it really, really works brilliantly. It blows the wii out of the water, and then some.
Things to note...
Don't rely on the demo games, they won't last long.
I bought Sports Champions and Start the Party, more than happy with both.
Sports Champions is a no brainer cos it's just great. Start the Party is good for a bit of a laugh when you have people round and for £25 you can't go wrong, esp if you have young kids.
You'll probably want two of the motion controllers pretty sharpish. Gladiator Duel is great but really comes to life with two controllers, same for archery. Plus I'm guessing there must be a hundred titles in development that will play better with two. Then there is the two player aspect.
In case anyone is wondering, no, the gameplay isn't based on gestures mapping to an on screen action. Not at all, the movements on screen are simply what you do with the controller, swords and shields swing as you swing them, frisbies are thrown as you throw them and balls are rolled as you roll them.......exactly.
I was beginning to regret buying a PS3 instead of an Xbox, Move changes that.
Ive already got the eye toy and on a whim grabbed the move controller for 28 quid from tesco...
Bugger me its good!! knocks the Wii mote into a cocked hat! Ive downloaded the demos and found that a couple of titles I already own are compatible (Mini Golf and hustle kings)
Ive Just spent a bunch of time playing Ruse - a C&C type strategy game... Its taking some time to get my head round the 3D control method, but zooming about the battlefield with the wand/six axix combo is almost intuitive and almost as quick as a mouse!
I was aprehensive, but waving the thing about reclining on the sofa isnt too bad! you dont need to be standing up and waving your arms about... all in, for sub 30quid, not a bad punt!
And, quite frankly, it's freakin awesome! In terms of how the game responds to me moving the controller, it seems more advanced than the Wii controllers. For example, if I rotate my hand without moving my arm, the bat rotates. If I do this while hitting the ball, I slice the ball. Don't get me wrong, the Wii is superb but I think Sony have come up with something a bit special here.
Agree 100%
I wasn't expecting to play Table Tennis much, but it's just so damn playable, I can't get enough!
I've played with the Wii a lot and Move has blown me away. Sony have definately done good here.
It will be interesting to see how Microsofts efforts compare.
The accuracy was fantastic. The augmented reality stuff was sweet. The games were shit.
Painting? Feckin' PAINTING?? Get out of my face. The Americans get Razing Storm and we get Start the Party? A patched version of Heavy Rain, maybe, but I think I'll wait a bit before buying one. The list of games that will support it is impressive, but they should have had a few more proper games at launch...
..how the pointer works? I know from comments that Move is loads better than the wiimote, and no doubt for gesture control it should be (it's had 3 years since the wii came out to get better!).
But the best bit of the wiimote for me is the pointer control, it's what makes all those light gun games (and there are many) so much fun.
Now the wii pointer works by having two leds on top of the telly and a sensor on the front of the wiimote, so as the wiimote moves it senses where the leds are and you get an accurate pointer.
The move seems to have a much trickier job. The camera can see where the ball on the front of the move is, but it must be using the position sensors to work out where it's pointing.
So how can it be anywhere near as accurate as the wii? Doesn't it suffer from calibration issues where over time, particularly in a game with pointer and gesture control, it get's a little unsure as to where it's pointing? Does anyone know how this works?
the ball is only one part of the device... inside it are several accelerometers, gyroscopes and a compass... so the thing is able to know its position in 3D space, even without the camera... the ball helps the PS3 judge distance and movement...
the Wii just triangulates its position from the wand and 2 IR transmitters and is much cruder...
Try the tumble demo on the PS3 and see how fine the controls are when you move the blocks about the screen, like a wii, then rotate and move the blocks into and out of the screen...
it does need occasional calibration, but point at the camera nad press a button, its not too obtrusive...
compared to the move, the Wii pointer is not accurate!! it hovers and lags behind the wii mote.. the move, is rock steady and suffers from zero lag!
you say "so the thing is able to know its position in 3D space, even without the camera", I think you're wrong here. How can it tell how high off the floor it is with accelerometers and gyroscopes? The camera is surely an integral part of this ability.
I don't agree that the wii pointer is inaccurate or laggy, provided it can clearly see the leds in the "sensor" bar. As I said in my first post the pointer is the one thing that the wii does excellently. I don't doubt that the move is better at motion sensing but the basic pointer tech, however crude in the wii, is far simpler and surely more robust. While you can calibrate the wii pointer in some shooter games, once it's done it won't drift unless the sensor bar moves.
This isn't a dig at Move, I'm just interested in how much effort it is emulate the crude wii pointer with all that Sony hi-tech!
spend £30 and buy one...
In addition to the mentioned tech, there is a also a digital compass. Lots of internal sensors, in conjunction with the Camera looking and the Orb.
The bottom line (and one that you really don't want to accept), is that it works, it works REALLY well, and totally blows the WiiMote (even with the Motion+) out of the water in terms of accuracy, responsiveness and game flexibility (there are way more potential options for games.)
don't I need a ps3 as well? Doesn't that put the price of entry up around £300? Nintendo must be shitting themselves....
And it's not that I don't want to accept it's better than the wiimote, as I said originally an extra 3 or 4 years in the lab and it should be a lot better.
The point I'm making, which you just don't want to accept (irritating and patronising, isn't it?) is that that crude wii sensor bar makes a much simpler therefore more robust mechanism for driving a pointer. matt_payne666 said "it does need occasional calibration, but point at the camera nad press a button, its not too obtrusive...". The wiimote pointer doesn't need calibration.
As I originally asked, does anyone techy who understands exactly how the move pointer works want to explain it?
I'll see whether this sinks or swims after christmas. I have all three consoles and tbh aside from the techies and PS3 obsessives, the public probably has a slightly meh attitude to all types of motion control which are not the Wii as its really no longer new and it just looks like Sony copying Nintendo, even down to the optional Nunchuck (or you can sort-of-hold a dual shock 3 in one hand instead...riiiight!) and cobbling together a solution with multiple config options which is about 3-4 years too late to market and is an add-on which is unlikely to gain massive penetration to the fairly mature PS3 market due to its high cost (note, relative to the Wiimote tech the cost is not excessive, but the Wiimote comes packaged with the Wii and has since launch). You can learn a lot from history here in the videogames market that no expensive add-on not shipped with the console which requires specially made games or patches has really been a success EVER . Think about it. DD Drive, Eyetoy, Super Scope, Menacer, 32x, Mega CD. All have their 6 months of glory while devs wait and see how many people will buy it beyond the initial PR campaign then decide that not enough people own the device to make the cost of development worthwhile. The Kinnect had promise but is seriously compromised from what I've seen in my hands on demo earlier this month, by the hardware spec being brought down and expectations being raised far too high. Until the next generation of consoles is released and all this tech can be packaged with the base system cheaply, its not going to fly beyond early adopters running out to buy it, regardless of the technical proficiency of the Move itself which unfortunately seems top-notch.
I'm lucky enough to have picked up a Samsung 55" LED 3D TV at the weekend, and I took the opportunity to grab a pair of Move controllers at the same time.
I just tried the move controllers out first, and they really are as good as has been indicated here. The pointing at the screen works brilliantly, and the augmented reality stuff is eerily accurate. Say what you like about Start the Party (and do, it really is shit) but there's something about seeing 3D objects put into your hands that accurately. I especially liked the giant foam hand, which wobbles when you shake it about.
I then tried Tumble. It's a Move only game from the PSN, and revolves around making towers of blocks. You use a (or one for each hand if you like) controller to pick up the blocks using the trigger. The 3D controller works great here, with you able to quickly get used to reaching towards the back of the level and grabbing the exact block you wanted quickly and easily.
That was all great, but until then I hadn't actually got the 3D TV functioning properly. Once I had that, I realised that Tumble was also one of the 3D enabled games available. I hadn't even really considered what using a 3D controller and a 3D display would be like, but I can promise you it makes all those expensive boxes worthwhile. Within no time at all, you forget you're even using it, and using your hands in the 3D space starts to become natural. Reaching back to pick up a block is now as easy as reaching onto a table and picking up a block. You can bring it up right near to your face to look at it in close detail, and of course the 3D display looks great here. I won't pretend that looking at virtual blocks right up in your face is in itself fun, but the whole experience seemed to me to be a glimpse of things to come.
I think Sony have done a great job here - on a side note, there are enough buttons on the navigation and move controller combined to map every button on the Dualshock - that means big budget first party games (such as Killzone 3) can just include move support with simple control mapping (largely, and assuming some sort of Move API for the clever glowy bits). This is where the EyeToy fell down, and I think Kinect may still fall down in time - they require developers to modify games heavily, or write specific ones. I know Kinect has some first party launch titles and the like, but I'll be surprised if the support doesn't wane before too long.
The other thing I found interesting was going back to the Wii having used this for a bit. It's a little bit like going back to old consoles - you have nothing but fond memories, but when you actually go back and try them again, you wonder how you ever put up with it.
If you're on the hedge about it, just wait - there's nothing unmissable on it yet, although there are fun games available. Within a month or two there's going to be some big titles coming out, then we'll see how well it's going to survive. It all looks really good for now though.
Yes, it's a review of the hardware and not of the various games. Otherwise they'f have to change the review score potentially every time a new game came out.....
I borrowed a Move setup from someone and had a go last night. I was especially impressed with the table tennis as I used to play a bit and could quite nicely replicate the various spins using the controller. There's very little lag (not really noticable) and it really is very accurate - you can see this from the representation of the bat on screen which changes with every minute detail of your hand movement.
The sports game is pretty decent but I can't wait for some of the upcoming titles. I can't think of much that would top a good hack and slash if it was done right.
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