Motion Gaming, we’ve all done it, we all enjoy it, but is it here to stay? Is it the New Black?
I enjoy playing games on my Wii, there were a few firsts. I picked up the console at 12:01am on launch morning, my girlfriend and I played WiiSports Tennis until 5am, went to bed and both woke up with Wii-Tennis-Arm.
Working in video game retail some time after this Wii-Arm was something people told me about almost every week. And working in video game retail, I saw that most of the people buying were moms with young families, this demographic tended to buy games in the same vein as WiiSports, any game that would be classified as hardcore, Metroid, Zelda, etc. it was not sold. exceptionally well.
Now that Sony has PlayStation Move, and Microsoft has Kinect, motion control gaming is a reality, or it will fall by the wayside. Sure there will always be a children’s market, motion control games allow children to play, without the fine motor skills that games used to require. But as these young gamers mature, will they turn away from motion control games?
The Move and Kinect launch titles are mostly aimed at children. While E3 showed us Move apps for games like The Force Unleashed 2, is Sony and Microsoft’s choice to release a motion controller for their systems a market share grab for Nintendo?
I personally think we haven’t seen what these new motion control interactions can do. I have high hopes for what is to come. The trend in console sales, with the Wii selling to families and the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 selling to hardcore gamers, means that developers who previously didn’t implement their ideas for motion control because of their platform destination can now do so. The potential is there, we keep our fingers crossed that the potential is realised.