A high production value HD core game which wants to implement motion controls will either have to incur even more costs for QA and game design, or it will have to make gameplay compromises which don't live up to the potential of motion controls.

The first will delay the arrival of quality games which make use of a system like Natal, the second will make Natal seem less than revolutionary and slow adoption of the peripheral.

see..I think you're missing the point..the PS360 won't easily get Core HD motion controlled games

combining those is too much and the profit goes down so much it's not worth it

they can make party games with lesser graphics, sure.. they can make Core HD games without motion controls sure

but incorporating both would be too much work, since the 3rd parties working on the wiimote tend to fail

now imagine precise controls, wich will make them fail even harder unless they focus on that more, but if they focus on BOTH visuals AND good controls...on an HD system, you've got a big problem..who's willing to lose money? just to please a few core gamers?

I can't link to an actual cost tree to split up the development resources needed by your average 360/PS3 game, but I don't think we need to go in that detail. Let me spurt rough numbers:

Let's just take the average costs for developing a PS3 and 360 game vs developing a Wii game. If you concede that the HD game is going to cost $15M to $50M, vs $5M to $20M for the Wii game, and if you concede that the cost (=man-hour) difference is mostly due to the asset production then the remaining part of development seems to amount to something like 1/3rd to 1/10th of the overall cost.

This remaining part covers stuff like graphics, AI and physics engine, user interaction etc. Say that you have to add 10% to that slice, you're into 1-3% range of overall cost, and I very much doubt the 3% extreme.

A cost increase of 1-3% is negigible when compared to other factors. That's $300K to $900K on a $30M game, that we can quantify in something like 12500-45000 copies sold (at 20 to 24 dollars per piece).

We're talking about a game costing about as much Gears or Uncharted here, let's say that it aims for 1-2M copies sold. Our extra development will be covered by about 0.6-2.25% of these.

The fluctuations in the profit you get from money exchange, the effectiveness of the marketing, the critical reception are all risk factors that to me seem likely to make this amount irrelevant.

see this is where I think you are wrong, who said that using these so called more precise motion controls won't cost alot?

who said it would only cost 3% at most?.. that's going about it the wrong way..wich will end like the blog post I copied:

they will NOT put enough time and effort into it wich would result in crappy motion games in HD..crappy motion controls that is

Uhm, I have never developed a game, but I figure that the Wii libraries just return the acceleration/gyroscope/IR numbers from each Wiimote+WM+. That's 9 numbers (3 placements from IR, 3 from accelerometers, 3 from gyros) for the motion part.

Each Sony wand, as long as they work as demonstrated, will likely return 6 numbers (3 placement coordinates, 3 from accelerometers) for the motion part.

After getting those numbers from the system libraries, developing a 1:1 sword system is the same on both platforms... actually simpler on the Sony side in some cases because you have direct position tracking.

Project Natal's tracking can return you lots and lots of numbers, but to get a 1:1 sword system running, you'll only use a small subset of them, probably in the same order as Sony's wands, as the position and orientation of a sword can be defined by 6 numbers.

Basically the increased cost is probably not going to come from the coding itself, but from the extra time needed to design, polish, gametest an 1:1 system. That's the 10% I added to the entire design/code/test part, that makes about %3 tops overall, and it does not depend on the technology that is providing you with those 6 to 9 numbers.

I hope this motion cotrol for hd is only used in minigames or thing not relevant, like I said in another thread, I like my traditional controller

No, I get it, I just see that:

a) based on Wii there is no need for titles to have very expensive budgets to succed.  An HD Wii Sports, Raving Rabbids, Boom Box, etc. would likely cost a fraction of an Uncharted, Killzone 2, etc.

b) this is because the genres which seem to work best using motion control do not need huge engines, many levels, etc.  Mario Galaxy for example would play as well with a gamepad as a Wiimote IMHO - I found no advantage using the Wiimote with it.  I see minimal advantage to motion controls for FPS, driving, etc. - although I will wait to see what they manage for FPS as a genre I like.  Likewise a traditional RPG.

c) both consoles can continue as normal with big HD titles that either don't bother with motion controls or just use it as an option - for example I like the idea of using the camera to allow you to lean in FPS while you sit using a normal controller

d) there is simply no proof to the 'it would take too much work' arguement.  Based on what?  Has this been discovered already?  As a hypotetical expanple, if Naughty Dog did want to support motion controls, would it really blow the budget out the water in addition to the high cost of making an Uncharted?  I see no reason to believe this.

e) ditto for profits as per d) above - there's no proof that developing a title with HD graphics and using motion controls wouldn't be profitable.  The PS3/360 have PSN / Live as delivery mechanisms, they could provide a slew of cool, motion control titles with graphics like Wipeout HD that fully exploit their controllers and these should offer developers a nice route for low cost distribution of motion control specific titles.

f) the audience is unknown yet.  If (and as I said I think this is the real challenge for Natal and the PS3 Wand) there is enough of an install base then the audience could be very large.  Large enough to support the controllers.

I have a Wii and fully give Nintendo credit for what they did and the risks they took.  But while I do see risks for MS / Sony getting into that space, in particular the potential market share already lost to the Wii is pretty big, I don't see automatic failure either, and in addition to the risks I see plenty of upside if they get it right.

agreed 100% then.

If it's a peripheral controller it's a gimmick, if it's the new standard controller for the HD Twins, then it depends.

Note: Microsoft till now have used the Xbox 360 to make a clone of the PS3, their goal isn't to do better than the PS3 it's to be the PS3.

When people think PS3 they know about the Xbox 360, the reason for the massive price drops weren’t to be below the Wii because 250 is some magical number, it’s because it’s a cheap PS3 and would hurt Sony dropping the price further which is probably why they lost the intent to compete in that way any further once they realized price drops sustained price drops and not sales.

I know little of the differences between Natal and Eye Toy (Wiimote thingy) but if the two are different forms of input then this could legitimately be the first time both platform holders would compete against Nintendo’s little white console directlty.