Topic: PS3's Wand...Does Nintendo Have Anything To Fear?

I've been thinking about this ever since the Wand was actually announced. It's pretty obvious that in order for the PS3 to do well with its Motion Controller, it will have to make some games that people will actually buy. I think it's pretty much impossible to tap the casual market the way Nintendo has, it wouldn't even make sense for Sony to try. But when I looked at this video of Resident Evil 5 using the PS3 motion remote, I started to wonder:

It makes me wonder whether Sony will go after "core" gamers with the motion control, and whether if RE5 does well if that means Wii owners who enjoyed the redone RE4 on Wii or Umbrella Chronicles can just forget about a numbered entry in the series on the Wii. What do you guys think?

Sony is not Nintendo, they can't make good casual games like Nintendo does.

Nintendo has nothing to fear, unless the PS3's motion controls support are great from the start.

Their controller is more accurate than the Wii motion plus, but other than that...nah. It's not like Nintendo's fanboys will switch over to the PS3.

sony and casual are two words that dont go together

Umm... singstar and eyetoy says sony can do casual, and were doing it back on ps2.

I don't know Sony isn't exactly a stranger to casual gamers, just look at Parapa for example, plus the PS3 isn't so monstrously over priced anymore, but I doubt it will take much if any business away from Nintendo.

i agree those were both pretty innovative but sony's just copying again i mean we already have the wii

Quite simply, yes.

Wait... So you're saying Nintendo has made a good casual game then? Well, apart for WarioWare but that's an anomaly.

@Kid_A

I don't believe that the wand is universally more accurate than the Wii remote w/ M+. As I argued in another thread, it seems to me that certain tasks would be better suited for one or the other.

In particular, using the wand to aim like a gun at the screen or point at a specific area, unless someone can prove me wrong on this, seems far more limited than the Wiimote's use of an IR camera. The reason is that the Wii remote has the camera located inside its tip, with the sensor bar on the TV merely providing 2 LEDs that it can keep track of, while Sony has the camera on the TV and a direction-less light you are holding. While that inversion may seem trivial, think about what an enormous difference it makes with aiming. The Wiimote's camera has a certain field of vision, and it "sees" where you are pointing it with regards to the IR bar, so that twisting it (to hold your gun sideways) is immediately registered, and it doesn't simply matter where the tip of the remote is located in space, but much more importantly where it is aimed. If you hold the remote so that the tip is in exactly the same spot, but at 2 different angles, you'll be pointing at 2 different spots according to what the camera can now see. With the wand, you just have a ball that has no direction, so it doesn't seem as if it would be significant at all which way you are twisting or angling it. this means that it's not natural like aiming at something, but instead an artificial correlation between your arm motion and the space of the screen. That's awkward.

What's even more off-putting about their comparison as basic pointing / selecting devices is that the wand lacks the clean ergonomic design of the Wiimote whereby you can either "click" on something as naturally as a mouse, or pull a trigger to simulate a gun, or squeeze both to feel like grabbing or picking something up. That may seem minor, but it's those little details that make navigating menus and interfaces in Wii games so incredibly smooth and comfortable compared to any other game system's interface thus far.

Now, as far as measuring precisely where your hand is located in the space of the room, the wand may indeed be more accurate given its choice of a TV-mounted camera, but then it will still have the same difficulties of translating those awkward human motions into what you intended to do. Figuring out that you meant for your arm movement to be a horizontal slice in a sword game, when it in fact drifted between several axes of movement and acceleration, will take just as much complex guesswork as it will with Motion+, where you don't have the movement in the room as your starting point but a different set of data regarding how the remote felt that it moved laterally, rotationally, etc. Either way, regardless of precision, you have to write software that can translate intentions in order to provide a smooth gameplay experience.

To the people who think Sony is only just now copying Nintendo after seeing the success of the Wii, you should know they filed a patent on their motion controller back in 2004. It was originally meant for the PS2. Nintendo was just faster off the mark in revealing their motion controller because their technology was greatly inferior.

No, what's awkward and unnatural is moving your elbow up and down, changing the position of the back end of the controller rather than moving your wrist, changing the position of the tip of the controller, in order to change where it's pointing.

In any case, "1:1 motion" means it copies exactly how you're holding the controller. No, not just the position of the glowing sphere. The entire controller. They already demonstrated this at E3. Look how the entire body of the controller moves on the screen exactly as he moves it irl. It registers movement of the body of the controller, and not just the tip. Especially check out the flashlight demo.

I'm not sure what you mean. It seems to have a front and trigger button.

It's 1:1. Not 0.3:1. You can see during the E3 demo when they're mirroring the screen and his motions and when they're overlaying the images that there is extremely little delay between his motions and the motions on screen. It's precisely because the camera is external that the calculations are simpler and there is less lag.

Sony has amazing 3rd party support, including EA, and it has its own version of MotionPlus built in, I think that Nintendo needs to either step up or step out of casual gaming.

Tell 'em, RandomWiiPlayer.

Oh, the old "it looks stupid so it'll never catch on" argument.

Lol.

I just said it looked stupid. It might catch on, just won't catch on me.

I guess only time will tell. But obviously Sony and Microsoft had something to fear since they are now releasing these products.

You said that Nintendo has nothing to fear after saying it looked stupid.

If you actually think that it can catch on, don't you think that means Ninty has something to fear? I mean, if it's popular and in direct competition, that's something to be concerned about.

OK just disregard everything I just said. Sheesh I'm confused...