Microsoft’s Project Natal versus Sony’s Motion Controller

Project Natal had the most positive response. Additionally, in regards to overall conversation volume, it had around three times what Sony’s motion controller generated.  Interestingly, after these announcements, we saw a notable increase in negative chatter around the Wii Motion Plus, with negativity increasing around 8%. This is attributed to users seeing these new developments as superior to Nintendo’s long-time-coming accessory.

 

Posted by justin on June 03, 2009
Entertainment, Games, Technology

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is wrapping up in Los Angeles. At their respective keynotes, both Microsoft and Sony made major announcements in a similar vain.  Microsoft presented their Project Natal, a camera-based device which can track full body motion without needing a controller. Shortly after, Sony demonstrated a prototype high-precision motion tracking controller for the Playstation 3.  Both exciting and impressive in different ways.

We decided to see the web’s reaction to these announcements, and threw the Wii Motion Plus accessory in for comparison.  MotionPlus is an add-on coming for the Nintendo Wii controllers which improves their motion tracking accuracy and capabilities.

 

 

Top E3 Announcements

Posted by justin on June 05, 2009
Entertainment, Games, Technology

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) has concluded and we have analyzed the most discussed announcements from the show.  Microsoft’s motion-tracking Project Natal unsurprisingly took the top spot followed with the PSP Go.  Metal Gear Solid, the most discussed game, came in third.  Some other notable mentions are Gran Turismo 5 versus Forza 3, for which GT5 generated the most chatter.  Also, Scribblenauts is quite far down the list, but today the game as been generating a strong upsurge in mentions and we expect this one to get a bit more attention over the next few days.

Wednesday we posted a sentiment comparison between Project Natal and the PS3 motion-tracking controller you can see here.

The full top listing is in the chart after the jump, displayed by the percentage of E3 discussions mentioning that announcement.  The Top 10 is in the image below:

Top 10:

Edit: This post was edited as it was noted we excluded several announcements, so we’ve added all we could find and generated a new chart.

Source: http://infegy.com/buzzstudy/top-e3-announcements/

First Step = Mission Accomplished...Natal has created the buzz...

This reminds me of Obama's Speech to the Muslim World...it got rave reviews, but step 2 is key...M$ needs to start flushing out the details.

Well that makes sense when you think about it. Wii Motion Plus was revealed at last E3, so it wouldn't be very talked about when it's shown again.

The best motion controller of the bunch is the unassisted Wiimote, because the other three (yes, I include WM+ in this) get a very critical aspect of motion control completely wrong: they focus on what the user does instead of what the user wants to do. A few 1:1 games will teach a very important lesson to the people who have been clamoring for this (yet have never used it, because 1:1 games have been hard to come by, but a few do exist, and nothing will turn you off of 1:1 faster than actually using it).

At least Nintendo has a reliable fallback: the standard Wiimote, which doesn't let developers substitute buzzword-compliance for proper interface design. Alas, it looks like even Nintendo is going to have to learn this lesson the hard way.

True. And they messured all that was said, and little more than 20% of all that actually was said, was negative. But percentiles can be misleading since it can be 1 in 5 or 20 in 100.

The top graph is pretty inconclusive, all it says is that people in general are a little more positive and a little less negative about Natal. Extreme emphasis here is 'little'. Also how did they measure percentage of conversation? Is that a forum metric? Did they use voice recognition software on the E3 show floor?

"We decided to see the web’s reaction to these announcements"
That line makes me think that they assembled data from whats been posted on the matter on the internet overall.

They used Natal.

all that matters is the one that sells the most...

and they are all discussed a lot btw, and if you consider WM+ is 1 year old...

haha, voice recognition powered by natal software :P That's why the results are as they are.

Anyway, it's fairly obvious why it is the way it is.

PSmote is very similar to the Wiimote, so it won't get much attention paid to the hardware, only to games that Sony announces for it

WM+ has been known about for over a year, there were no new announcements about it.

Natal is something new and different, and it had Milo, which was a lot more impressive than anything Sony showed.

Oh well, we shall see how both PSmote and Natal go