What will sell better PS Move or MS kinect

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Profcrab said:

Squilliam said:

Profcrab said:

I think Move will ultimately be more successful due to the greater variety of games that can be played on it.  Kinect lacks some sort of direct response device and that limits the commands you can give to the game.  However, I think both will face the peripheral problem.  Move is attached to what is already the most expensive console and will require the purchase of more controllers that are only useful with Move games.  Not only that, the price goes up if you want to play group games.  Kinect only requires one device but what it can do is more limited.  Neat, but limited.  Direct input from pressing buttons allows more options for the game and combined with the motion tracking, a more dynamic experience.  Just motion controls by themselves mean that the developer will stick to simple and easy to express gestures.

I give this thread a 9.6.

I hope you realise that of the four most compelling pieces of software this generation, Wii Sports tennis doesn't need buttons, Mario Kart uses just one button IIRC and Wii Fit doesn't even use a controller whilst NSMB just has a standard pad. None of these games remained niche. Actually the more buttons a game uses the more niche it is, not the other way around.

I don't now about compelling, but yes they were big.  I think Mario Kart used 2, brake and look behind, but I could be wrong.  Either way, lets look at that for a second.  Something simple like looking behind wouldn't work well without a button.  How would you tell that to a game in Kinect?  Are you going to actually look behind you?  Would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?  You need buttons for things like that in games.  One of the big control problems facing motion game designers is making is what to control with motion interpretation and what needs more direct input.  

With Kinect, they've opened up the developers possibilities for motion control input but removed the direct.  So, now you face these problems.  How do you look around in a car in a racing game?  Using voice commands is a pretty slow way to do what you do naturally very fast.  Sure you can tell the game you want to walk, but forward and backward are a problem.  What it leads to are games that actually have less avatar freedom.  Sure that avatar can express lots of actions that the player does but some of the simplest are out of their reach.  How about walk right and walk left?  Are you going to have a screen on rollers that shifts as you do so you can turn around in a circle and explore a game world?  Look at the Star Wars game.  It's a rail shooter with a light saber because there is no way for the player to actually run around.

So, while Kinect opens up a few doors, it shuts a few also.  Those that it shut are pretty damn important though.  The Wii does not survive off of Wii Sports and Wii Fit alone.  Kinect needs to show that it isn't a one trick pony.  It needs to show that it has the ability to not have everything be on rails.  While I think Kinect is neat and is possibly an important contribution to the evolution of motion control games, it is missing something that will limit it.  This missing component will reduce the diversity of the games and limit it's market acceptance.  Also, being a peripheral attached to an existing system, the consumer needs to not only be sold on the Kinect, they need to be sold on the $300 system the $??? Kinect.  The Wii was $250 and came with Wii Sports and a controller.  Granted you still needed to get the $20 Nunchuk and more controllers, but the control scheme came with the system.  Firmly entrenched in that casual market, the Wii Fit board sold well.  I don't think it would have sold half as well on any other system.

I love my 360, but I just don't see Kinect taking the world by storm.  Part of it is trying to appeal to the people that already own Wiis, then there are some of the game limitations and it is a peripheral.  I hope it's a good beta test for the next xbox control options, but I think that Sony made the better choice here in sticking with the controllers, even if they don't have some of the cool "whole body" interpretations.  Not that I think Move is going to do a whole lot better.  It is an expensive peripheral setup on top of the HD console pricing (the same issue that affects Kinect), but I think the games will be more diverse and we'll see HD versions of many Wii style games because the control scheme is similar enough.

I give that post a 9.3.

This.

And about buttons and niche or wide appeal games, the rule is not to use as few buttons as possible, but to avoid using more buttons than necessary, but neither less than necessary, in both cases the control scheme will become more complicated than the ideal case. In the case of less buttons than necessary, it could force to remove, or make awkward to control, actions that even the most casual gamers find useful.