This week's community discussion comes thanks to Ulrich (our work experience extraordinaire) who thought the recent hardware sensation "Leap Motion" would be a good opportunity for you to chat about motion controls and gaming.
Ulrich:
The upcoming motion control device from Leap motion aims to make your mice and controllers obsolete. Apparently the sensor will be able to detect movements 200 times better than the Kinect, allowing you to control your console or PC with just your fingers. These promising features have already attracted an incredible 23 000 developers wanting to develop for the device, many of them aiming to create games taking advantage of this technology.
All of this sounds exciting, but could this really mark the end of conventional controllers or is it merely a fading craze? Do you think we should join the multitude of developers making games for leap motion?
Which Square Enix games do you think would work best with motion control? And is this really the future of gaming?
Share your opinions with us in the comments. Feel free to discuss the topic and engage with each other’s ideas but please be nice, there are no wrong answers.
Comments
I hope that most companies will keep in mind with (especially) their current franchises that not everyone is excited for motion control and will keep the option to use a controller and don't force motion control in a genre where it absolutely has no place (like RPG's) just for the sake of using the technology.
The only games that seem like they could benefit greatly from these controls are shooters since the motion controls could better simulate using a mouse for targeting.
I also imagine myself getting my hands tired more quickly waving them around than playing with a controller, lol.
How I don't know! :D
Yeah, I agree about how some JRPG's like Final Fantasy wouldn't work well with it. There's just so many actions, it would probably be impossible to try and come up with multiple hand/pen gestures for all of them. Unless it was similar to FFCC: The Crystal Bearers, since there was pretty much only one action you could do. Of course, you could just point at the menus on screen if you were to use JRPG's, but I would find that less interactive compared to using a controller. I think Kingdom Hearts would work really well with it though because of the style of gameplay it uses. However, again it would then be another issue with trying to come up with gestures for abilities, but there's a lot less compared to FF, so that would be easier to overcome. I haven't played Deus Ex so I don't know the game play so I wouldn't know if it would work, and from what I've seen of the new Tomb Raider, I think it would work well as long as it's done right of course.
I think motion control could become a common feature on consoles in the future (well, it sort of already is), but I find it hard to believe that they would replace standard controllers. Motion control wouldn't have a major affect on some games (like I mentioned with FF) so another control method will need to be in place. And I agree with zumo about the technology. They all have flaws. I mean the Wii, despite being older than the Xbox 360 Kinect and Playstation Move, works really well, even better than them in some cases. But even then, they've incorporated physical controls into their controllers, simply because some games don't work with just motion control.
I personally would not want to use motion sensing technology to control something. If I'm going to control something, I would rather use a touchscreen or object, and not wave my hands in mid-air and probably look like an idiot doing it at the same time.
As for the future of gaming, I can't see every console being motion control. Nintendo Wii is currently the closest (and best form of) console with motion sensor. The Kinect for xbox 360 is awful. You have to stand so far away it's ridiculous and it's doesn't even pick up movement that well. I haven't ever used Playstation Move so I can't comment on that. But I can see all games working on a platform like this. Controls/Keyboards will still be needed to play games. Plus not everyone want's a motion sensor console. Especially if we have to sit that close to the city!