Yes, im one of those sorts of people who gets immensely excited about the goings on at the annual E3 show, now for me to try and summarise everything about the show for you guys would be a momentous task, so I thought id just focus on the biggest item this year and that is..yes you guessed it, Microsoft and Sonys bids for a bit of Nintendos gorgeous motion control pie.
Microsoft were first, with the first proper look at their extremely pretty looking Project Natal, a motion sensing device which they hope will muscle the Wii out of the casual gaming topspot.
It combines an RGB camera, microphone, a whole host of sensors and a little Microsoft magic to create a mighty impressive looking piece of tech, which boasts voice and face recognition, complete 3D body scanning.
Me describing this to you will definately not be as useful as seeing it for yourself, so for your appreciation here is the E3 tech demo of it in action.
Show some love for the getup that guy near the beggining is wearing btw!
Next up was Sony, who came in with their as yet properly named Playstation Motion, it works in conjunction with the Playstation eye and in simple terms is basically the Wii, but more precise. Using your unimaginatively named 'wands' you can have what the Wii offers, but with millimetre precision, no random waggling required.
It seems Sony have tried to focus on both casual and serious gaming and are trying to make their device as comprehensive as possible on the gaming family tree, where as Natal may have limitations when travelling outside of party games genre and mere novelty. Take a look:
As impressive as Natal does look, its much further from actually being released than Sonys offering (early 2010) and will likely be much more expensive, alot of what Microsoft showed at E3 had already been done by the good folks over at sony with many year old eyetoy tech and the stuff which was new was completely scripted, note the inclusion in the trailer of 'vision'.
What do you guys think?, should Sony and Microsoft leave motion controls with Nintendo? who have already made enough money to buy the moon several times with the Wii.
And was there anything else you liked the look of at this years E3, motion controlling aside?
I think Sony and Microsoft are great for trying all this motion technology out for themselves, whether precedented by Nintendo or not, finding something out for yourself is always more fun than simply acknowledging someone else's work!
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I must say, seeing as my sister managed to demolish my old PS1 without being about to kick at the screen, I dread the thought of her getting a hold of these motion controls...