E3 2009: Hardware Sucks

Let's start off easy. Nintendo showed off the Wii Motion Plus attachment. It's a little thing that plugs into the back of the Wiimote, and allows you to plug in the nun-chuck also. It makes it so the Wiimote has one-to-one precision, vs. whatever they have now which isn't one-to-one. I'm going to buy at least one probably. If there's a game that uses that I want to buy. Red Steel 2 is close, but it has a lot to prove to me so a lot of reviews will be read and taken in before I purchase. The ripping. I have to spend money for one-to-one controls! Why wasn't this implemented at the beginning!? Just kidding. I just wanted to give you a preview of the ripping. I know why it wasn't put in. Money according to Nintendo. But yeah, it's not a bad thing at all. It's a good thing. But not all the games will use it, and existing games will never use it. So I guess that's a bad thing.
The stupidest thing showed off was the picture of the Wii Vitality Sensor for the Wiimote. What am I going to do with this piece of crap!? I'm a gamer, and I don't care about my heart rate at this point in time! If I think really really really hard, I can think of one cool idea that could be used in a real game. And that is if you are playing a survival horror game, and the environment changes with your heart rate. That would be cool, but does the Wii have the processing power to interpret that? I don't know. It didn't impress me. Alright, the Wii doesn't get that bad of a thrashing. Let's talk about Sony.
Sony showed up to E3 with a wand and a camera... that sounds dirty. Rewind. The Eye Toy was originally released 2003ish for the Playstation 2. It could sense motions, colors and had a microphone. Because of marketing or something, it was a disaster in my eyes. I never bought one. Most of the games that required it were put out by Sony and were some of the largest turds in the shovelware category, even competing with the notorious Wii shovelware. I need to give you a history lesson for both Sony's and Microsoft's thrashings. Cool technology, but again, crappy game magnet. Especially for its time.
Fast forward to the release of the PS3, and we have the Playstation Eye, which is an updated version of the EyeToy. Great, more crap. The Playstation Eye is actually used in several games, but no one cares because it's just to upload a picture of you to your profile in games, such as Burnout Paradise and Rainbow Six Vegas 2. You have some extra features with it for LittleBigPlanet, but no one wants to shovel out the money for it just for an extra. The Eye of Judgement was probably the coolest thing the Playstation Eye has ever done so far, which isn't very cool because it's bringing card games (like Magic the Gathering cards, not poker) to life. When you lay down a dragon card, the dragon attacks the other player's card on screen. Cool, but I'm not that big of a nerd.
And now we are at E3 where Sony has a wand and a camera. I believe that they didn't want to show off this thing this year at E3. I think that they were like "We have a prototype for a motion controller, but we won't show it off unless Microsoft shows off a motion controller." And Microsoft did (they'll get theirs, mate). So two guys got up on stage with prototype. The controller is actually a wand with glowing ball at the end of it... like a microphone. You can hold it in one hand, much like the Wiimote. The Playstation Eye is involved with the motion control process. The Eye is able to tell where the wand is, and interpret it's movements which creates a one-to-one movement. I give preps to Sony for demoing real types of gaming, like the first person shooter, Real Time Strategy, and Sword Fighting. But at the same time they were like "Holy crap! Nintendo is making lots of cash! Let's copy! what do you have. A camera? Alright make a Wiimote that uses the camera." And thus it was born. The accuracy of the writing was impressive, but who writes in games... oh yeah Okami which is one of my favorite games of all time. So that could be good. But like I said earlier, Sony wasn't ready to demo this technology yet. There were no games shown that would use it, or any hints at developers already using it. Not to mention the price point. The PS3 is expensive, and the Eye is 40 bucks. How much for this wand? What games can we expect? What developers? All important questions that Sony didn't know because they felt they needed to show off something.
Jumping to the PSP Go. This little machine is the PSP, except no UMD. Which means it will be the second big game system to go all digital (the IPhone being the first, if you want to consider it a gaming platform, which it is slowly becoming thus). If you already own a PSP 3000, then I wouldn't care. I own a 3000 so I won't buy a PSP Go, but it's cool to think that the gaming industry is taking a huge leap towards digital distribution. I think it's a good thing, and internet service providers need to change as well. I really don't have anything bad to say, except that bit about if you already own a PSP, don't waste your money.
Ah Microsoft. Microsoft showed off Project Natal, which uses a camera with a built in microphone to detect movement... I've heard of this before. Oh yeah, the EyeToy. No controller required. It has facial recognition technology (so a little different) and voice recognition. Microsoft demoed a boy stomping around in his living room destroying buildings as a dinosaur on screen. There was also a teenage girl talking to a friend online on what outfit to wear and demoing the outfit on her avatar... which doesn't make sense because her avatar doesn't look exactly like her, and the dress doesn't look exactly like that. They also showed a boy scanning in his real skateboard deck to be used in a game. There was also racing while sitting down. The whole family was there sitting on the couch. The daughter driving... the dad being the slave laborer and changing her tires. Probably the stupidest trailer at E3. Unless there was a Hannah Montana trailer at E3. It was the worst trailer I watched, but I try to avoid crappy trailers. They demoed game play for painting... because I want to paint apparently. Also showed people doing advance shadow puppetry. Oh and there was Milo, but more on the English brat later.
I give Microsoft points for showing off actual game demos. But that's pretty much all. They were all shovelware. Not one of them was a first person shooter, RTS, RPG, etc. Which means they are gearing it towards non gamers. Kinda like the Wii. So Microsoft successfully copied Nintendo and Sony. Sony just copied Nintendo, so they didn't get it as bad. The problem with gearing Project Natal towards non gamers is the price point. I heard murmurs of a price point of $200. For the camera. Then the non gamers need to buy a $200 XBox 360. And that's the Arcade version. But that's just rumors so it can't be trusted. So let's throw that out the window and point out that Microsoft only showed crapware. Much like the games for the Sony EyeToy. Look up what kind of games were released for the EyeToy, and you'll see what I mean. Maybe Microsoft will promote it better then Sony did, and maybe a really good developer will be able to come up with a really good idea.
Enter Milo. Peter Molineaux, the overhyped person behind Fable and god games, came up with Milo. Milo was a demonstration of the interaction between the person and the game with Project Natal. Milo is a British boy who reacts to Alex (I think that was her name). Alex walked out and said hello to Milo, and Milo recognized her voice and responded with "Hello Alex" or something personal like that. You really need to just watch the demo. I'm sure a google or youtube search of "Milo Project Natal" will bring it up. Milo needs help with homework apparently. Milo didn't want to admit it to Alex, and Alex knew by Milo's action that he didn't do his homework. He needed to draw a fish apparently. Alex helped by doing his homework for him, by drawing a fish of a piece of paper in the real world, holding it up to the camera of Project Natal, where Milo reached toward the camera also, and acted like he grabbed the picture and there it was in the virtual world. Milo threw something at Alex and caught it apparently.
To shreds you say. I'm going to pretend that that wasn't scripted. The problem with saying "scripted" is anything with computers is, in fact, scripted. The programmer gives the computer a few choices to respond to certain situations, and the computer responds accordingly. It cannot stray from the patch that the programmer has created for it. So on a technical level, it was scripted, but so is every video game. So let's forget about scripting. After watching how the game "Heavy Rain" changes with each of the players choices/actions, I wanted more from this virtual person. What if Alex would have insulted Milo, like I would have done? What if Alex threw the object back at Milo? What if Alex didn't catch the object? I think Microsoft should have showed off several different demos of Milo, because the point is to create a virtual being that a real person makes a connection with. Each person is different, thus the connection will be different for each person, therefore each person's actions will be different. I think that's a valid point. I honestly do not believe that saying "It could have been scripted" is valid, but the point of the demo was to make a connection with a virtual character. And they did not succeed in my eyes. Alex created a connection (we assume), but I would not have.
A friend of mine, who is a female gamer, got excited over Project Natal. I have a different mind then her and I look at the entire picture. As we were debating over this, she says "wouldn't it be cool reload a gun like you would in real life, therefore you could actually get faster at reloading your gun in the game, instead of the 'wait a few seconds' approach most games do?" Yeah it would be, but how would you walk in this game? How would the camera know you are pulling the trigger? The camera might be sensitive enough to pick up the trigger pulling, but that has the con of human error/cheats. I say error/cheat because it maybe super realistic and if you do it realistically, it works well, but it could be exploited to work nonrealistically, better. You know? I don't have an example of it because the Wii hasn't had the precision yet to do this. It's been done in games though. The flying thing in Halo is what comes to mind. But that's a glitch, and not exactly what I'm talking about. In the end, I don't think as a standalone thing, a real game will be able to use it. It may work as a gimmick, where you play with the 360 controller, and then the Project Natal adds to the realism with something else, but all that is, is a gimmick, like the Playstation Eye and Burnout Paradise. Will a gamer pay the extra money for a gimmick?
To step away from the shredding, I have to say this. Nintendo's, Sony's, and Microsoft's approach to different controls are all different. Nintendo has a motion control remote that also responds to an infrared sensor. Sony is using a camera and a control combo. All three different approaches to motion controls, and all three good ideas. It's cool to see technology advancing, and I hope that it adds to the gaming experience.
So in conclusions, Wii Vitality Sensor sucks. Playstation Motion Control didn't really have anything to show, so they sucked. Project Natal sucked because it's a gimmick/shovelware magnet. Only time will tell if any of these three can redeem themselves, and they may. I'm Royfuss, and I approve this message.
I really do love God of War.