Why Move Is Going to be a Winner

I’ve had the PlayStation Move hardware and a smattering of games in my grubby mitts for a few weeks now, and whilst my previous hands on only had good things to say about the actual controller, I perhaps wasn’t quite so complimentary about the games.  There was, I summised, plenty of potential with Move but some of the titles that will be available mid September seemed to misfire a little, missing the mark that you’d normally associated with software releasing at what is essentially the PS3’s midpoint.

I was, however, wrong.  Over the weekend I got the chance to demo PlayStation Move to some friends.  Sorry Sony, couldn’t resist.  These are friends that are aware of games, play them now and again but aren’t what you’d call hardcore (and probably far better off for it) – the speed at which they grasped the concept of Move and the ease at which they dived into the games was incredible, and the slight disappointment my jaded self had with (for example) Start The Party dissolved immediately – in the right hands, so to speak, it’s brilliant.

Probably a consequence of both having seen what the Eyetoy had tried do in the past, and writing about what Super Generic Shooter 2010 can do over its rival on another console has tainted my view of what games should be about: fun.  Start The Party is absolutely that – it’s pitched perfectly towards gamers that aren’t asked to digest 720p screenshots all day and don’t care whether something’s running at 30fps or 60 – and it works so well that having seen my mates hogging all the action I felt compelled to let our readers know that I’d made a mistake.

It’s not that I’d written off the Move, of course, I love the thing and I think it’s going to be a huge success.  But whilst games like Sports Champions seemed fully rounded and more consistent, I’d doubted the potential of Sony’s party title without giving it a proper playtest with its target audience.  It’s so refreshing to just pass over the Move Controller and say “the trigger’s to shoot” rather than having to explain dozens of buttons, and because Start The Party plays off well known actions (like whacking moles or cutting hair) even the minigames explain themselves.

Naturally, putting the player in the game itself helps too – when you can see yourself on screen, the Move Controller whatever device the game wants it to be in front of you (don’t underestimate the immediate, wholly immersive sensation of seeing your hand holding a massive sword on screen) you have scale, scope and purpose, and it’s obvious what you’re meant to do.  Thus, when the game starts firing off 5 second blasts of microgame there’s no ambiguity, no doubt – the players are always in control without ever really thinking about it.

This isn’t to say that Start The Party is for everyone, of course – but if Sony pitch all this correctly and get the adverts and the demo pods out there in time for launch (nudge the Wii out of the way a bit, would you?) then I’m confident in Sony’s abilities to get the right message across.  And in the grand scale of things, when us so-called hardcore gamers are back to worrying about pixelcounting and Trophies, we can rest easy in the knowledge that there’ll be thousands more happy PS3 owners out there swatting at flies and making pizza.