As some of you may seen already Sony has officially announced that the PlayStation motion device will be called PlayStation Move. The name may not be as awesome as Arc but Move still fits given the nature of the controller.
Set to launch later this year the Move will be released in three bundles. One bundle will comprise of only a controller, another will include a controller, a PlayStation Eye and a game, and the last bundle will be the complete package for new PS3 users as it’ll be a PS3 console, PS Move, PS Eye and a game. Sony plans to have the PS Move/Eye/game combo to retail for under $100.
The Move will also have an analog stick based secondary controller which is appropriately named the Sub-Controller. Yes, it’s a bit dull but snazzy names aren’t that important as it’s all about the games. From a games perspective Sony’s early Move offerings looked rather good as not only was the performance of the move terrific from a technical standpoint but the games had that PS3 level of quality that we all love.
Several games were shown to the press such as casual sport games including Table Tennis and Golf along with more “core” centric games such as a third person fighting game tentatively called Motion Fighters. To be honest the sport games weren’t too much to write home about aside from the graphics but the level of precision in relation to player movement and the complete lack of lag or other technical hiccups was rather impressive. Basically, and this isn’t meant to cause a flame war, there weren’t any Natal style “this is what the bottom of an Avatar’s shoe looks like” moments or general Wiimote iffiniess.
Games catering to the core audience of gamers such as Motion Fighters and the recently announced Socom 4 looked to perform as equally smooth with the Move at the helm. Motion Fighters itself is a 3rd person fighting game in which the player uses two PS Move controllers and has complete 1:1 control over the arms and body movement of their fighter. This allows gamers to dodge when needed, throw side punches and uppercuts and my favorite attack: a spinning back fist. Motion Fighters doesn’t look to be a game that most of us will sink eight hours into but visually it looked impressive and the level of control that was shown in the demo was at times a bit shocking due to how good it was. But if someone at Sony is reading this just tone down on the grey look of the game ok?
Socom 4 on the other uses the PlayStation Move and the Sub-Controller and it wasn’t the complete mess that many worried that “proper” games outfitted with motion control would be like. Once again the precision of the motion control, in this case an aiming pointer, looked rather fluid and there wasn’t any major differences in how the game played as it didn’t have that tacked on feel to it. Socom 4 itself looked nice and had more of a direct action approach that was more akin to the pop and shoot mechanics of Gears of War. That’s not to say Socom 4 will be a run and gun cover shooter but what was shown in today’s demo was definitely more action packed that what we know the franchise for.
All in all PlayStation Move’s first proper showing was nice. It may not have had that initial “shock and awe” feel to it since it mainly focused on short demos of casual games. From a tech perspective you can’t deny that the Move is extremely nice though it may still ultimately gain the moniker of “Wii HD.” Whether or not that will be a good or bad thing remains to be seen but if Sony can push out some solid 1st party core games that use the Move in impressive or entertaining ways I think we’re in for a much better line-up of games than we initially expected.
This and Natal is mainly casual gamer bait plain and simple. The whole Socom 4 demo was suppose to be the appeal to so-called "hardcore" gamers yet when I watched the guy using the Move and the sub-controller, he ended up looking like somebody using an ordinary controller. They said they wanted to also emphasize that not every game is going to be about flailing your arms about wildly yet here they had this guy who is using a motion controller yet hardly moving at all. To me to use it like makes the controller more of a gimmick since it doesn't really appears you are playing the game drastically different if you were using a regular controller. One thing I don't like is the potential packaging of this device. It seem like most of the games will require you to have two Move devices and something tells me in the bundle they are only going to sell one so that means you will automatically will have to drop extra cash for the second Move device for you to fully utilize the gaming experience. As for the price listing mentioned for under $100, please don't insult my intelligence with a $99.99 price tag. The PS Eye is $40 so I cant imagine that the controller will be worth $60 and I am not even counting the included game since that will be more of throw in. As of now I see myself getting this at launch
this is great. casual games can be very fun if played online with friends. so i have no problem with seeing the PS3 flooded with casual games for this new PS3 Move as long as they will have online support.
I want the fighting game they showed....so bad. The gladiator one looked promising too.