Move - Initial Impressions


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To go along with the Kinect topic I thought we could share initial impressions of Move here.

I was surprised at how non 1:1 the Tiger Woods demo looked. There seemed to be definite lag between the presenter and what we saw on the TV.

Here's a take from Gizmodo:

PlayStation Move Isn't Much More than a Wii HD

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I had high hopes for PlayStation Move since its announcement. Having played around with various titles for about an hour today, I have to say: if Sony's technology is better, it isn't showing in its first-gen software.

Frankly, I'm not sure that it ever will.

Here's the premise: PlayStation Move tracks a ball of light with a camera. Move's big claim to fame, if you're comparing it to Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus, is that it can track you in Z space (depth). That means you can stab someone with a sword rather than just swipe.

My first demo was a game called TV Superstar?essentially a series of minigames themed like a TV show. The Move's camera snapped photos of my face, mapping them to my character...cutting off my goatee so I looked a bit like Hitler. The gameplay? Waggling. And faster waggling to make my character run faster. Take away some cutesy character customization, and you see the sort of half-assed motion game Sony should be sweeping under the rug.

So I tried The Fight: Lights Out. This is game seemed like the antithesis to TV Superstar. It's gritty and violent, sure, but it also tracks two Move controllers rather than one, allowing you to punch an opponent into oblivion. Plus, the Move's camera would track my eyes, allowing me to rotate my position by turning my head (a good thing, since I was warned not to move my feet after calibration). I couldn't wait, even donning 3D glasses for the full effect. The combat? Laggy. And I never felt like my punches were registered the way I threw them onscreen. Rather, my uppercut registered a precanned animation. I understand that my punches probably looked too horrible to use, but a lag, combined with pure animation cues, stops you from feeling like you're fighting. Heck, even Wii's loosely controlled Punch Out!feels more like actual boxing.

And things didn't get much better for a while. Shoot was a tiring, slow, aim-the-camera-at-the-TV shooter. Singstar Dance? It looked polished, but since when is waving one arm dancing?

So What Did I Like?

Luckily, my Move demos weren't a complete wash. The new SOCOM, for instance, is no more technically advanced in terms of controls than any Wii game: Aim the wand at the screen, use a nunchuk to control your camera, shoot people. But what made it infinitely better than the average Wii title was this thing is a real PS3 shooter. It looked and felt like a real PS3-gen game, offering a level of graphics and physics luxury that we've mostly lost in the era of motion controllers.

Sports Champions, Sony's now-mandatory answer to Wii Sports but with a gladiator?including a shield-and-sword mode?really shined as well. It's not that the motions were perfect 1:1, but the animations and motion tracking found a natural, comfortable balance. I felt like I could control my shield without any tutorial, and the same can be said about the sword, whether I was charging in with a shield bash or slicing away at my opponent's legs.

And EyePet...look, Sony's EyeToy has been doing augmented reality for a while. But my EyePet, a beautifully rendered monkey who sat on the carpet in front of me, is the sort of app that you don't see on the Wii or Xbox 360. Now was a full motion tracking Move system necessary to make the game work? Probably not. The monkey reacted as well to visual-based hand tracking (think petting) to the wand (with which I blew bubbles and threw a ball). But the wand did make the game more fun offering me ways to interact that otherwise would most probably be impossible.

I'm by no means writing off Move. It's a peripheral that may indeed have more tricks up its sleeve than the Wiimote, but demos of actual planned games don't lie. It's clearly going to be under-supported by unpolished first gen software for a while.

Now, whether Sony can make sure a few bad apples don't taint the consumer's perspective of the bunch, whether Sony can entice developers to stick with the platform through its growing pains, these are the "ifs" that cloud the future the Move platform. But based upon my early hands ons? It's a Wiimote HD, for better and worse.

Source: Gizmodo

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So both are silly expensive for the casual gamer. Kinect doesn't map you sitting down, nor have any hardcore games at launch. Move does have hardcore games but isn't 1:1 (yet?).

Awesome. :/

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Hopefully they'll have the glitches out before launch.... I'm wondering about this, though:

The new SOCOM, for instance, is no more technically advanced in terms of controls than any Wii game: Aim the wand at the screen, use a nunchuk to control your camera, shoot people.

I guess he's never tried the Metroid Prime Trilogy or The Conduit. :)

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The fact that it isn't 1:1 yet is bothering me. I thought that between the time they first demoed Move and now they would have things like lag sorted out.

I'm hoping that either by the time it's released to the public this issue is sorted out, or through firmware/game updates (hopefully this isn't a hardware problem unsure.gif) over time.

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As with Kinect... FAIL!

The Wii only worked because it was marketed for the casual player and aimed for "fun parties" it is priced right for that market.

I wouldn't say all PS3/xbox owners as hardcore, but I don't see these selling well. £300, I'm guessing, for the console + accessories to emulate what the wii does with better graphics! (I know I'm simplifiying it)

So no Sony, as with Microsoft, I will not be buying this. Just to end up 6 months later to be never used again (just like my wii, which I sold :) )

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Yup, really can't see me buying this any time soon tbh. Unless something amazing comes out for it then it will just be an additional peripheral no one will use.

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The only reason i would buy any motion control at this point is for Tiger Woods and as shown by the demo, it's not completely right. So i think i'll wait a year or two (or three).

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I actually think it's shameful to compare Move to the Wii.

Why?

Because Sony doesn't get it. The focus is only on the technology.

They have lost this generation. Nintendo won. Pack it up and hope that Nintendo won't kick your ass again with the successor to the Wii like they kicked your ass again with the 3DS.

Move as Wii HD? People (as in, the mass market) don't give a **** about HD.

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Some impressions from one of the guys over at GAF.

Admittedly I haven't been thoroughly reading the thread but as a person who played some demos for the Move at GDC, I know some stuff I think you folks should know about.

When you use the Move, it is not only reading the controller (depending on the software) but it is also using Kinect-like motion tracking on your body. One of the demos I tried was just displaying what the camera saw (you) but gave augmented reality to the stream. So it kinda looked like you were holding a sword or a hammer or whatever (I say "kinda" because it's still rendered on top of your hand if it doesn't use the Move controller as a hilt) but there was an extra function to show the skeletal tracking it was also doing. At the time it was able to track my torso, shoulders, head, elbow, and hand, making it basically render my upper skeleton in a simplistic graphical display. It followed me perfectly (unless I spun around or something goofy) and was actually really impressive.

This is something the Wii controller cannot do and something that I think will really set it apart from the crowd. 1:1 motion, head tracking, and the ability to use Kinect-like body tracking? I saw it all in the GDC demos but none of this cool stuff was really shown at the E3 Sony Keynote. I hope developers take advantage of this stuff and give us better than what we've seen so far.

"How was the lag?"

"It followed me perfectly" meant there was no lag. And by that I mean the skelton on the screen was perfectly following my image on the screen. HOWEVER an important thing to note is that the display was essentially a mirror, showing me myself through the camera's view. This is important because the image on the screen was lagging behind real-time but just barely enough that it wasn't bothersome. I'm not sure if it was done for the purpose of showing the skeletal tracking in a good light or if it's just because the camera can't feed fast enough (hey, neither can webcams, which is probably why it wasn't a bothersome lag) so for all I know if they tried representing the skeleton without the camera feed, it may have been a no-lag tracking.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... the camera lagged, so the skeleton lagged, but the lag was short enough that I didn't feel the same kinetic dissonance you feel when trying out the Kinect or playing a WiiMotion+ game.

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Some impressions from one of the guys over at GAF.

"How was the lag?"

LOL. It followed me perfectly!! It just followed me a couple seconds after I did it...

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what i dont get is how everyone is "zomg its like wii". great! for ps3 owners who dont have a wii and dont want to buy one but would like to venture into wii-like motion control with better looking games, then this is a good thing to get.

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what i dont get is how everyone is "zomg its like wii". great! for ps3 owners who dont have a wii and dont want to buy one but would like to venture into wii-like motion control with better looking games, then this is a good thing to get.

realmad.gif Reported!! How dare you bring logic and level headedness to this discussion.

But seriously, I think the backlash is mostly at the people that were saying Wii is stupid but now Move is awesome because it's so advanced and so much better. Of course there's a pretty big camp of people that say the Wii is stupid and so is Move (and Kinect) but whatever. I own a Wii and I like some of the games for it, my wife and kids like others. It's cool. The Move (like you mention) will just add the capability of this to the PS3. I think the most telling part of the review is this:

But what made it infinitely better than the average Wii title was this thing is a real PS3 shooter. It looked and felt like a real PS3-gen game, offering a level of graphics and physics luxury that we've mostly lost in the era of motion controllers.
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I was surprised at how non 1:1 the Tiger Woods demo looked. There seemed to be definite lag between the presenter and what we saw on the TV.

I too was surprised. It was horrible lag in that Tiger demo. Still plenty of time to work on the Move bugs before release.

Kinect doesn't map you sitting down

But it does. Just not in every game yet. They are working on that for release.

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I own a Wii and I like some of the games for it, my wife and kids like others. It's cool.

Initially, that would be the only reason I would get a Move (ugh at having to get two, plus nunchuks), but my son isn't old enough anyway. I've seen some cool stuff, but nothing "killer" enough to buy it, same as I never saw anything killer enough to buy a Wii.

My concern on the demo is "was the lag intentional"? @ the GDC demo, they said lag could somewhat be built in by the devs, to make it more "casual". In a golf game, a half-second lag isn't a big deal. In a shooter or fighting game, it's a terrible thing. It has the potential to lag within one frame, but outside of tech demos, I haven't seen it -- then again, I haven't first-hand seen SOCOM or Killzone, just party games and Tiger Woods.

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But it does. Just not in every game yet. They are working on that for release.

Way to back peddle you were quoting MS a few days ago screaming: IT'S FINE! :/

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Way to back peddle you were quoting MS a few days ago screaming: IT'S FINE! :/

No back peddling at all. Both MS execs stated it does work, and in fact they were sitting down using it in the menu system. Way to make stuff up. rolleyes.gif

Screaming? lol..ok

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No back peddling at all. Both MS execs stated it does work, and in fact they were sitting down using it in the menu system. Way to make stuff up.

So back peddling then?

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<snip>

I like that it'll just be a title update for the game. However, when he's spinning the controller around the screen you can see the lag again. It seems similar to Metroid, though.

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PlayStation Move pricing ?potentially confusing?

The number of peripherals required to get the full PlayStation Move experience may lead to disappointing sales for Sony, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter believes.

To be able to play every game available, players need to own the PlayStation Eye camera, two main Move controllers (for Sports Champions? crossbow game for example), and the sub-controller (though there is a less comfortable option), which if all added up amounts to roughly $160 and bring with it ?the potential to confuse consumers,? Pachter says in a post-E3 analysis.

?Some games can be played with the PlayStation Eye camera and a Move controller, some with the Eye and two Move controllers, and some with the Eye, a Move controller and a Navigation controller.?

?In order to be safe, consumers wishing to participate in the Move experience will have to purchase the Eye, two Move controllers and the Navigation controller, plus a game. If purchased as part of a bundle, the all-in cost to play with Move will approach $180, which we think is beyond the reach of the typical household.?

?We think that Sony?s Move is truly impressive, but remain concerned that initial sales could disappoint.?

Move will launch in Europe on September 15, North America on September 19, and Japan on October 31.

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