Motion Control is the near future

I keep reading about how motion-control may ruin gaming for any gamer who grew up with systems preceding the Wii. It is frightening to see the way people jump around in those Project Natal commercials. But as it is now, playing the Wii isn't so exhausting, unless you're playing those stupid party games where the aim of the game is to see who can make the biggest ass of him/her self. Developers aren't about to abandon the hardcore demographic and sell just carnival game shovelware for all 3 consoles. I'm sure their smart enough to figure out how to manage motion control for games that gamers traditionally play for hours at a time.

The bottom line is that the pros far outweigh the cons. Sure, you're going to have to do a little exercise, but the overall benefit is much deeper gameplay than could ever be achieved with conventional controllers -- maybe not on the Wii, but definitely on PS3 and 360. Character control limitations are what lead to gameplay limitations. And two hands can only make use of a certain number of buttons and joysticks. Conventional controllers only support games with manifest context sensitivity, with indisputable success. Just about every game has at least one context sensitive button. My point is that there isn't a game out there where you can execute all the fundamental movements that an anthropomorphic character could do.

Don't worry, I'll dumb this down. Basically, what I'm saying is that there isn't a game where you can walk, look, jump, lean, crouch/sit, move your arms, grab items, use items, and combine these movements to execute just about any action you would ever want to make in a video game. However, motion control can make this possible. This gen, I think Sony has the best chance of achieving this depth of gameplay. Aside from having the greatest precision, the Sony Motion controller reassigns much of what would normally be controlled by buttons and maintains buttons and hopefully joysticks for just the essentials.

I believe the ideal setup would be two Sony motion controllers with several face buttons, a trigger, and joystick on each. You can control movement and coarse look with the corresponding joystick. I find with the Wii that I'd prefer to look with a joystick and handle just the fine aiming with the IR sensing. The face buttons would handle actions like sitting, crouching, jumping, grabbing items. The triggers would be to use the items, tools , or weapons in hand. The motion sensing would be used to move your characters arms around to aim, swing, or just to reach for something. Leaning would hopefully be handled by the eyetoy's less advanced body motion tracking.

Imagine being able to grab a tool, say a hammer, and use it to nail something down. You'd be able to drastically alter the environment and use it to your advantage. Like LittleBigPlanet, except fully 3d and through your character instead of through a menu system. Whether you would create for art or war ,its invaluable, really. How such freedom would impact gaming, I can only begin to imagine.

It doesn't take much imagination to realize what this can do for gaming. So don't fight it, and definitely, don't fear it. Just take action, voice your opinion, and do your best to make sure the game industry continues in the right direction.