Motion controls move games into the future

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

Dear readers, I have seen the future of gaming!

Here, see for yourselves. Check out the preview for the upcoming sci-fi flick “Gamer,” and you’ll see a future in which video game enthusiasts use their bodies to control their games.

In these movie-imagined days to come, a gamer moves his arms and, voila, his in-game avatar moves its arms in response. He moves his legs, and the avatar moves its legs too. Talk about precision controls! Of course, in this future gamers manipulate real people rather than digital people, forcing these poor meat puppets to partake in a first-person shooting game gone awry.

Nevertheless, it’s an interesting prediction of what’s to come, and after last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, it seems that this fictional future may not be all that fictional after all. I know I wasn’t the only person who took one look at Microsoft’s demonstration of Project Natal and thought of not only the movie “Gamer” but thought “Holy cow, the future is nigh!” (And yes, I actually said “holy cow.”)

At their E3 demo last week, Microsoft presented a not-so-distant future in which Xbox 360 players will use their bodies — and not handheld controllers — to play their video games.  Move your arms and your avatar moves its arms. Move your legs and your avatar moves its legs. Just like in the picture shows!

For the record, Project Natal does not appear to employ the use of human meat puppets. But this is Microsoft so, well, you never know now do you? (Did I mention that MSNBC is a joint Microsoft – NBC Universal venture?)

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images file At E3 last week, Sony's Rick Anton demonstrated the company's motion control project. He used two wand-like controllers to do things like swing a sword and fire arrows at virtual enemies on the screen before him.

Certainly one thing that’s been made crystal clear not only by last week’s E3 extravaganza but by this week’s launch of a new Nintendo gadget: The future of gaming is in motion.

In addition to Project Natal, Sony last week unveiled its own as-yet-to-be-given-a-catchy-name motion-control device. While Project Natal uses a special camera, depth sensor and microphone to read players movements and recognize their voices, Sony showed off a controller that looked like a bubble-topped magic wand — a magic wand that works with the PlayStation Eye camera to let gamers interact with the virtual world before them in a highly precise manner. Pick up a sword and swing it around. Aim your bow and fire arrows at oncoming enemies.

Glitzy demos aside, Microsoft and Sony are really just trying to catch up to the reigning king of motion controls — Nintendo. And this week, Nintendo is taking its own ground-breaking motion controls even one step further with the launch of Wii MotionPlus.

A revolution in gaming
Say what you will about the Wii's "waggle" controls, but Nintendo's motion-sensing Remote and Nunchuk — launched with the Wii back in 2006 — have proven to be a major milestone in video game history.

Sure, many core gamers have derided the Wii’s controls for their lack of precision and gimmicky implementation, but analyst Michael Cai, vice president of video game research at Interpret LLC., says the Wii and its controls have been so important to gaming that Nintendo may as well have called the machine by its original code name: “Revolution.”

Nintendo Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway says the MotionPlus's increased sensitivity will “provide a breadth of challenge. It doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert to play," she says. "But it means that if you are very experienced then you can enjoy these games to an entirely new level.”

No, Nintendo didn’t invent motion controls, but it was the first to get them (mostly) right. And the fact-of-the-matter is, the Wii has not only changed how we play video games, but it has changed who plays video games. That is, people who would have never otherwise thought of themselves as “gamers” are now happily playing and buying games. And it’s the Wii’s motion controls that were the key.

“The only real progress the industry had made in the last few years before the Wii was to add more buttons to the controller, which posed a significant barrier for novice gamers or for anybody who couldn’t master 30-plus combinations of buttons to play a shooter or a fighting game,” Cai says.

Motion controls — which allow for a more natural and real-world way of interacting with video games — just make sense to people. You swing the controller like you would your arm when playing a tennis game. You turn your controller side to side like you would a steering wheel when playing a driving game. What’s not to get?

Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, says the importance of motion controls comes down to this:  “It has democratized gaming. Anybody can be a gamer regardless of whether they can push buttons or pull triggers. Literally, if you can move your arms and legs, you’re a gamer.”

After last week’s announcements, it’s clear that Sony and Microsoft understand the importance of this newfound democracy. With Wiis now residing in more than 50 million homes worldwide, it’s kind of hard not to. So what does Nintendo think about their competition jumping on the motion control bandwagon?

“We think it’s flattering,” says Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive VP of sales and marketing.

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