The Tendo Project – Daily Nintendo News

The PlayStation Move is Sony's answer to the motion control trend. It uses a digital camera called the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of a new controller stuffed with gyroscopes and sensors and magic—all of it topped with a glowing plastic ball.

It's been over a week since my Move review hardware arrived, and I've played games with a variety of people just to gauge their reactions. When holding one of the Move controllers for the first time, everyone seems to have one instinctive response: they give that ball on the top a good, hard squeeze, like it's a clown nose.

The ball doesn't light up until you have the PlayStation Eye turned on and a game begins. Then it glows brightly, and the changing color of the ball often provides in-game information. The glowing ball also adds an extra helping of surrealism to some titles; playing archery, it was almost distracting to have that glowing pink orb so close to my face. During dark sections, I could see the glowing ball reflected on the screen of my television.

The ball sometimes cycles slowly between different colors. At other times it pulses. You can feel the motor inside the force feedback mechanism move in time to the light, as though you're holding the heart of some mechanical, bio-luminescent beast. If you have kids, you are screwed during play time; anyone from the ages of ten on down will gravitate towards that glowing ball, and they won't want to let go. My baby wants to gum on it constantly, while my older kids wave it around like they're at a pre-pubescent rave.

The PlayStation Move is here, ladies and gentleman, and it's pretty damn great.

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The Nintendo Wii has enjoyed amazing success this generation, bridging the gap between hardcore and casual gamers. The low-cost console's innovative motion controls expanded the audience for games, and it looked as if Sony and Microsoft would never catch up in the United States. Both Microsoft and Sony ultimately decided that there's something to the whole motion control thing, however, and have announced products that will soon see them following in the Wii's footsteps.

Sony's entry into the motion control race is the Move, a collection of devices that work together to create motion controls that are more precise than what Nintendo can offer, with games that enjoy high-definition graphics and better frame rates than the Wii can deliver. Microsoft's motion effort takes a different tack, using a sort of camera that will sit under your television and allow you to interact with your games by moving your body and waving your hands. In essence, Microsoft's Kinect makes you the controller. Make no mistake, the Move and Kinect are me-too products. It's no coincidence that both motion control schemes follow on the heels of the Wii's success. The question is how well each product will engage with the Wii's strengths and weaknesses in order to carve out its own success.

After looking at the final pricing from Microsoft and Sony, playing many games on both technologies, and getting a feel for what both companies are after, we've come to this conclusion: Sony's strategy is going to offer more to a wider variety of gamers. That's not to say that it will be more popular, sell more, or make more money for third-party developers—it's just that for our audience, Sony is the better bet as of this moment.

Here's why.

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