It’s day three of our week on the future of gaming, and we’ve been focusing on consoles so far. So what next? I’m so glad I asked. Today it’s time to talk about the controllers of the future. We’ve talked a little about Natal and Move over the past two instalments, so maybe we should focus on those first.
There’s obviously no guarantee that motion control will make it into the next generation of consoles. The next few years are basically a big experiment for the HD consoles, seeing if they can either fit motion control around their ‘hardcore’ audience, or stealing away some of Nintendo’s audience. The general consensus seems to be that Natal will fail at attracting Microsoft’s primary consumer base, whereas Move has been shown to be integrable into ‘core’ titles like SOCOM. My personal opinion is that Natal may work well as a secondary controller, allowing motion based commands to be given, but it’s certainly more of a challenge to make it the primary form of control for a game.
What about controllers beyond Natal and Move? Well I present to you the VirtuSphere, half virtual reality headset, half giant hamster ball, all amazing. I’d heard a few descriptions of this technology come out of GDC and it sounds pretty obvious. Sure, they say it’s targeted at military training and all those benefit-to-society areas, but I can see someone making it into an awesome arcade game. I will admit that it’s hugely impractical for home use, but it’s far too amusing not to share in a discussion on the future of controllers. Maybe virtual reality will become practical in a home setting, but I don’t see any practical, home solution for the movement issue that the VirtuSphere solves.
What of the more traditional controllers? Well I expect Sony to keep the DualShock design, I think it’s been there a bit too long for them to really change in anything beyond those boomerang controller concepts. Microsoft’s next controller offering? Probably pretty similar to the current controller, hopefully they’ll fix the terrible D-Pad. As for Nintendo who knows, they’ve changed stuff pretty significantly between generations several times, so we can’t really predict what they’ll do. Maybe something like the Wiimote, maybe something else. Personally I hope they adopt the VirtuSphere.
What are your thoughts on the controller situation then? Will motion controllers succeed for Microsoft and Sony as they have for Nintendo? If they don’t will they iterate on them, or just go back to traditional control? What are your thoughts?
NOTE: This is a pre-written discussion, I may not be around to comment due to consuming vast amounts of pizza and playing games. Sorry guys.