Sony’s talking about buttons being important again, this time calling them irreplaceable as an input device.

Speaking with Edge, PlayStation Move designer Richard Marks said Eye and  Move are really flexible and can do things a hands-free controller and camera without buttons can’t.

“I think that you can do some things really well with just a camera, or just a 3D camera, but there’s just some stuff you can’t do as well. And there’s a bunch of experiences you could never do as well,” said Marks. “I think our system is really flexible because we still have a camera.

“Buttons are irreplaceable as an input device. Too many buttons are overwhelming, but one single action button is very powerful feeling. For core games you really do need a set of buttons to quickly choose things. Trying to replace buttons with gestures doesn’t work very well.”

Mark’s comments are very similar to ones he made at E3 back in June, when he said Sony had looked at motion cameras as a hands-free controller, but decided there were certain “experiences” that the cameras “can do that are really neat but there just weren’t enough experiences that made it make enough sense as a platform-level controller”.

“Sometimes we need buttons to have certain kinds of experiences,” he said in June. “Other times we need more precision than we can get out of those cameras. We need to know exactly what you’re doing with your hands, especially in the more hardcore experiences.”

Move is out in the US and UK as we speak.

Via Eurogamer & vg247.com