Sony’s “Doctor Move” Talks Kinect

Despite the PlayStation Move being released in a little over two weeks, Sony have been incredibly mature about the advantages their motion controller device has over the competition’s, with particular respect to Microsoft and their ‘controller free’ Kinect.  Incredible accuracy, perfect 1:1 mapping and games that fit in with the console’s pre-existing market and ethos are points that we’d have expected the Japanese publisher to be shouting about – but no, instead they’ve been concentrating on making the games and ensuring lovely people like us have the device so we can tell you all about it in advance.

In an interview in this month’s Edge magazine, though, Dr Richard Marks, SCE’s senior researcher on the Move project, has spoken out about Kinect, Microsoft and the types of games the Redmond giant are launching with. He’s still a gentleman, though, don’t expect snide soundbytes or glib digs.  He does say that Microsoft’s position of “one controller is too many” isn’t quite right, though – saying there’s “some stuff you can’t do as well” with just a camera, and there’s some stuff “you could never do as well”.

He goes on to answer a question based on Kinect requiring Microsoft to come up with new concepts around gaming, whilst the Move can just slot into existing ones.  “I think whether Microsoft succeeds or not really depends on whether or not people think that buying Kinect for that set of experiences makes sense,” he said, countering that by saying with Move “no matter who you are, you’ll really want [it].”  It’s all about the games and the market, with Move’s line-up, despite being slightly more esoteric than we’re used to just now with the PlayStation brand, it’s not as ‘out there’ as say, Kinect Adventures, which might well jar with the 360′s userbase.

Time will tell, of course, and both publishers are already working on the next generations of motion control games.  “A lot of the teams didn’t know what Move would be able to do when they started making their game designs,” said Marks.  “When you get the controller in your hand and start to play with it you realise there’s new possibilities to work with.  Just as with any new platform, it takes time.”

Edge issue 219 is out this week.  We’ll have the Move’s launch games reviewed on September 1st.  You can read more from Edge Magazine here.