Sony had a pretty good show at E3 this year. Visually, the display looked nice, the sounds were loud and crisp, and there were plenty of different games to feast your eyes on. Sensory serendipity. Sony’s booth also had the least wait-time because they had packed in so many different play units by building many of their demo units up rather than out, putting a second story of gaming goodness at the top of the center. If you just wanted to skip the lines and check out some sweet games, Sony was the place to go.
While the games are what made Sony’s booth worthwhile, and we’ll get back to them in a bit, it wasn’t what the centerpiece of their presentation became. This year, Sony was all about The Move.
Of course, I’m not so sure that was a wise decision. Microsoft and Sony both decided that this was the year they broke into motion-controlled gaming, balls to the wall and everything on the line. Without a doubt, Microsoft’s press conference rallied the least confidence, but The Move was definitely the most disappointing in performance.
Players eager to check out the games offered up to promote The Move were met with an eclectic variety. Leading the pack was Kung-Fu Rider, probably the most Japanese game I’ve seen in a long time, where a delayed business man rides a series of wacky objects, chairs, tricycles, what have you, down a huge hill to get to his work, kicking people all the way down.
Up next was a look at Start the Party, a series of mini-games and quick, goofy party apps to enjoy with multiple players. Sports Champions (pictured, with me in the ‘bow and arrow’ stance) is like an HD Wii Sports, with a few nifty new options for players, like the archery and what appears to be ax duels. A few rolls with these and you’re off to the really macho section of the demo, flinging fists at The Fight, or sneaking around and shooting insurgent terrorists at Socom 4.
The truly daring could move onto the Eye Pet, which was not only motion controlled, but also 3-D!( less exciting than it sounds. Motion Controlled, 3-D gaming is going to be pretty rad one day, I’d bet, but Eye Pet is more fruity than rad. Never liked pet sims myself; maybe if it were Seaman 3-D…)
Two problems came out of this presentation. First off, we’ve already seen it. Sony tried to break into the motion controls with the Six-Axis controller, but it really didn’t add much, and the Wii was still completely overshadowing it. The Move was an opportunity to improve on the Wii’s design, and make a new wireless standard of control. But all of the games that accompany The Move are just re-hashes of what the Wii did years ago. Sports Champion = Wii Sports. Start the Party = pretty much any party game ever, but it reminds me of Wario Ware the most. The Fight is any old washed-out, gray scale, crappy fighter; it reminds me of Tao Feng on the first Xbox. But the fact that we’ve seen other similar games is moot, right? They outperform Nintendo, don’t they?
Nope. 
The second point, then, is that none of these things seem to work that well. Nintendo pioneered the motion control, and somehow is the only company that has managed to produce seamless results; I don’t know if its a matter of time and effort in development, or some sort of black magic. Regardless, Kung Fu rider bareley responded to my travel commands, no matter how violently I shook the remote. Kings of Hustle: Pool (not sure if this is packed on another game or a stand-alone) was a poorly designed, out of control piece of crap that frustrated myself and every other player I watched. The Move starter pack, will retail somewhere in the $100 range… for that price shouldn’t we get better?
Of course, I can’t be completely sure if the fault lies in the failings of the Move controller, or if its just a programming problem with the games on the demo floor. The archery section of Sports Champion, requiring two Move controllers, worked well once you got the hang of it. Socom 4 was also pretty smooth, though in all honesty it didn’t use the Move controller to any great extent. The Move was a simple aiming device while all actual running, shooting and interaction was still done with analog sticks and button presses from the Navigation Controller (Nunchuck).
Hardware failures were nothing unusual at the convention center, so many of the games are in Alpha and Beta testing stages that there are still a lot of kinks to work out, so if there were still some freeze-up and some glitches in The Move, I can’t really complain too much about it. But I can say that The Move isn’t complete to a degree that would make it Sony’s prize gem. And make no mistake, the ‘This Changes Everything’ campaign they’ve launched for it is nothing more than the usual corporate hyperbole and posturing. The Wiimote changed everything, and The Move is just Sony’s way of catching up with the actual piece of revolutionary tech.
I think that, ultimately, The Move could be ironed out to be as comfortable and usable as the Wii. The potential seems to be there, I’m giving Sony the benefit of the doubt in believing that the Move can deliver the same kind of quality motion control that Nintendo can, even if they didn’t display it here. But if they wanted to impress us, they really needed to skip past the intro shovelware and get right into the meat of the concept. If The Move is supposed to beat the Wii, then it needs to utilize the PS3’s expanded memory and exceptional graphic capability to deliver the kinds of games that the Wii is incapable of and capturing a new audience, rather than trying to steal Nintendos. Socom 4 should be the example here, and motion controlled games with major action and graphical focuses should be the direction to go. Sony seems to be trying to beat Nintendo at their own game rather than seeing what areas the Wii fails at and trying to deliver on those instead. That long list of cartoony sports and party games? Leave them on the development floor, Sony, they ain’t beating Wii Sports.
The problem demonstrated here is a lack of creativity. Sony seems to be so desperate to not be the last kid on the block to gain motion control that they’ve hurried out the product without putting anything in that makes it new or different. Socom 4 looks like it’ll be a good game, ultimately, with smooth controls, sharp graphics, but there’s not really any creativity to it. It falls into the long line of shooters, with the motion control seemingly tacked on as an afterthought. It’s entire function is to replace the right analog stick on a normal controller. It looks and plays great, but The Move adds so little to the gaming experience. There’s more here that can be done, and hopefully Sony will continue to springboard off of this creation into new and exciting dimensions. 
I thought that Chromium II was going to be that first glimmer of supreme creativity at first. Its a great little game where you use the motion control as a flashlight, shining it at the floating blocks that appear on-screen, and as you change the vantage of the light and the shape of the shadow your character himself made of shadows, uses the new shapes and paths to wander through the floating, 3-Dimensional mazes. Its wonderfully creative. Or, well, it seemed to be until I saw Konami’s Lost in Shadow for the Wii. Not sure which was developed first but, well, there ya go…
Ultimately, I’m happy that The Move exists as a development tool, as some really crafty game designer could come along someday and use it in tandem with the PS3’s fantastic processing power to make some mind-blowing and original game. But right now, Sony doesn’t demonstrate the vision needed to push in that direction. Instead, they’re trying to be more like Nintendo, but delivering a product that doesn’t do anything different, and doesn’t seem to be quite as polished.
If you already have a Wii, you really have no reason to pick up The Move, and between the two, The Wii is just the superior motion-based platform with an established quality library of games. The Move is just too little, too late. Sorry Sony. But when the next generation comes out if you just want to build this kind of tech into the system itself instead of making it a gimmicky add-on, I’ll be aboard.
Start The Party challenges Wii Party. The Prize: Your Grandma’s game-time.
Socom 4 is the direction they need to go: Graphics beyond the Wii’s capability.
The Fight aka Tao Feng aka Fight Club aka Beat Down aka…
