Motion Controls

[VinceNoir]

I'm playing Skyward Sword at the moment and absolutely loving the design, story, weapons, characters etc. but I bloody hate the motion controls. I've got to a part where Link has to swim for musical notes and the way you control Link is by tipping the Wiimote back and forth. I hate it. It's absolutely infuriating. Having said that, I do like the way you use the sword, which works perfectly. But the flying/swimming thing doesn't do it for me.

Anyway, I basically started this topic to see what your thoughts are on motion controls? And because I was pissed off at the game and needed to vent my frustrations

[One Arm Babba]

Motion controls are too gimmicky if you ask me. Can't beat a good control pad. The SNES one has to be the best for me. PS pad good but the sticks are wank, Xbox pad is good but the d-pad is wank.

I think the only motion type controls that work are pointers like a gun peripheral or the wiimote for RES4. Any swinging of the arm or flapping motion is daft.

[Rusko187]

As above poster mentioned, I know it sounds odd to say but it's too mainstream! Not point in the motion control systems as they only seem to churn out dance, fitness and some other crap titles.

Stick with the pad

[Yojoe36]

The whole idea of it baffles me. How is waving your arm in-front of a TV fun? Especially when the general titles are sports games. Why not play tennis and golf for real?

You can do much more with a pad.

[Haydos]

Same as above really contol pads are perfect and I just want to chill out when I play a video game. My mate's got the new Zelda and tbh i'd rather play it with a normal control rather than having to swipe my sword around all the time...

[Stadt]

I think the Wii is for families more than Gamers hence the titles on the wii.

[SMX11]

Can't beat a keyboard and mouse for the genres I play. FPS, Grand strategy, RTS etc it is only way to get any decent accuracy. In terms of motion controls, I think that the technology isn't good enough yet to make games feel as close to reality when swinging it etc but I can't stood random waving and jiggling of the Wiimote in some games which is just put in there for the sake of it.

[Phube]

Interesting Article on the future of XBox, Including motion controls in GamesRadar...

I think he might be right! We'll all be living like Minority Report soon!

http://www.gamesradar.com/what-new-xbox-360-dashboard-tells-us-about-xbox-720-hint-it-wont-be-games-console/

What the new Xbox 360 dashboard tells us about the Xbox 720. Hint: It won't be a games console

And you shouldn't be at all surprised by the way this is going

However much you might or might not hate the aesthetic of the new dashboard (and being a new dashboard, tradition dictates that a lot of you probably do), this article isn’t about that. No, you see the new dashboard is a statement about a lot more than Microsoft’s current aesthetic predilections. It’s the clearest roadmap one could possibly want in regards to pointing the direction Microsoft’s next console will take.

I say “console”. I really shouldn’t. Because it won’t be a console. Not in the way you traditionally think of one. In fact games won’t necessarily be part of its core make-up at all. And it's too late to complain. This has been the plan for the last decade. I’ll explain all that in a bit, but first let’s take a look at what the new dashboard tells us.

It won’t be a games machine

The Games page of the new dashboard is found on the sixth tab along from the right. The sixth of nine. That’s obviously not screaming that gaming is a top priority for the Xbox brand going forward. If Microsoft was thinking about the Xbox (either this one or the next one) as a gamer’s device, the gaming functionality would be front and centre. Much like a car has the driver’s seat and steering wheel at the front, or a toaster has a great big obvious bread slot dominating its top.

But instead games are buried behind a heap of other media, making them now just one other thing that the Xbox can do if you want it to. Yes, I know the PS3 hardly puts games right at the front of the XMB, but the XMB, aesthetically at least, has always remained the same. The fact that Microsoft has actively changed the Xbox 360’s dashboard to sideline the prevalence of games says a hell of a lot about its shifting focus. This Xbox, and certainly the next one to an even greater degree, is no longer a games console that can do other stuff as well. It’s a general media provision box that can do games as part of that if you want it to.

See it as the living room version of a multimedia PC or a smart phone. Hell, is it any coincidence that the new dashboard uses the same ‘Metro’ interface tech that powers Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 7? No. No it is not. The intention is to pull these general media and entertainment devices together as a unified line-up. It probably always has been. Microsoft wants you to see them all as differently-shaped versions of the same thing now, just optimised for use in different rooms or on the move.

It will be a TV and music machine

Confused by the focus of Microsoft’s last couple of E3 press conferences? Bored senseless as a couple of men in suits banging on about sports TV seemed to get more attention than the first-party game line-up? Disheartened by the borderline non-existence of a first-party game line-up? Well all should now be clear. That wasn’t a misguided blip on the part of Microsoft. It was the first explicit step towards what the Xbox was always groomed to be. And now that reality is nearly here.

Let’s take another look at the new dashboard’s layout. The Social, TV, and Video tabs all come before Games, and the Music and Apps pages immediately follow it. Each contains a raft of different options and media providers, ranging from Microsoft’s own offerings to a wealth of third-parties. The Apps tab offers a stack of third-party media browsing and playback clients from the likes of YouTube, LoveFilm, Netflix, and a whole bunch of more obscure ones you’ve probably never heard of, making the 360 now a customisable watching and listening machine as much, if not more, than anything else

The simple fact that there even is an Apps tab, currently for the purpose of expanding this functionality, and no doubt to be used for the obtaining of all manner of other media clients and general widgets in the future, says a lot about the way the Xbox is now perceived by Microsoft. Couple in the dedicated Bing tab for searching for available media across all Xbox-signed providers and by any criteria, and it’s clear what the Xbox 360 is now. The media offerings will only expand ever further as the next machine is launched and develops in itself. The fact that the latest rumour has it pegged as containing a DVR, and the new purpose of the Xbox brand of devices is pretty clear.

It will have Kinect built in

Microsoft is not going to give up on trying to make Kinect relevant. That’s clear by now. But the thing is, as much as we can all moan about how the device's sole suitability for detecting big, vague gestures makes it useless as a game controller – and it does – controlling games is not necessarily its primary purpose any more. In fact it probably never has been.

No, Kinect is a media browsing device with the aim of providing tactile, hands-on interface manipulation. In much the same way that the Metro interface’s airy clarity and big, chunky, tap-and-draggable tiles have been designed to make it play extra friendly with the touch-screen interactions of the Windows Phone 7, so too its layout has clearly been designed to partner with Kinect in the living room. Make no mistake, this is how Microsoft wants you to control your current or next Xbox.

That in mind, Kinect (or a better version of it) will very probably be built in to the next machine, provided that those problems with room size can be sorted out. At the very least, the Xbox’s interface will only become further optimised for use with motion and voice control, traditional game controllers only being one option in case you actually want to use the thing for playing games. Which a great deal of Microsoft’s new target market won’t.

You’ll still be paying for Xbox Live. You’ll still be getting ads

There are a lot of ads on the various panes of the new Xbox 360 dashboard. A lot of ads. And the thing is, however much we might complain that we shouldn’t have to put up with them if we’re already paying for Xbox Live Gold (and indeed we shouldn’t), within the context of the new, multimedia-heavy Xbox dashboard, they’re justifiable. Or at least sort of excusable.

Above: Shudder...

Yeah, you see with the Xbox now very much positioned as a media box, the multiple media services you may or may not have installed will want to tell you what they have on offer. Indeed, it could be seen as a simple helping hand, part of the service in case you have no idea what to watch or listen to. From YouTube to LoveFilm, every media outlet online already does this, and we accept it as part of the culture if the way these services work. But an advert is still an advert. And the Xbox 360 now has a framework of benevolent media service camouflage to hide them in.

So basically, don’t expect Microsoft to go easy on the ads next generation, or make Xbox Live entirely free in recompense. There will only be increasing ad revenue opportunities to be had with every new media vendor that gets on-board with this or the next Xbox, and given that those ads can now be more easily integrated as part of the culture of the system’s functionality, they’ll be far more convenient for Microsoft to explain away.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be

But the thing is, none of this should be a shock. Whatever you may think, Microsoft has not pulled a bait and switch on you here. And it has certainly not knee-jerked all of this to grab the casual market. No, you see this has been the plan all along. Games have only ever been the in-road MS has used toward its plan of dominating the living room entertainment space in the same way it has long-since dominated the world’s PC use.

Above: From this...

Microsoft has always wanted to be at the centre of connected home entertainment. It has never made a secret of that. But ten years ago, neither the technology nor the market was ready. Mainstream internet connectivity wasn’t up to standard, and the mainstream entertainment audience was still too focused on traditional standalone, dedicated single-media players to really be swayed by an idea as radical as a magical, internet-connected box that grabbed film, TV and music from anywhere in the world and piped it through to any room in the house. So the groundwork had to be laid down while Microsoft waited. And fortunately, Microsoft had the money and resources to be able to afford to play the long game.

Ten years ago, a games console was the most obvious way to get a box under your TV. So we got the Xbox, an online-centric console with a few extra media streaming functions to lay the foundations and gently warm the mainstream audience to the idea of a unified media box. The Xbox never threatened to usurp the PS2 as a console – it didn’t even sell many more units than the Gamecube, truth be told – but that wasn’t the point. It was a foot in the door, and that was all that Microsoft needed at the time.

Above: ...to this in ten years. Rather a shift, no?

Then came the Xbox 360 Video Game and Entertainment System (official name, and rather important wording at that), a sleeker, sexier, less intimidating-looking machine with a greater focus on connectivity and media. And as things went on, the machine became even more multimedia-focused, culminating in the plethora of third-party media outlet deals which have dominated Microsoft’s most recent E3 press conferences. And we got Kinect, a device sold initially as a game controller (and one to bring the casual, family audience to the 360 in droves, rather tellingly) and then as a universal media controller via the new dashboard. If you think that Microsoft’s family-friendly focus with Kinect software has been a mistake, you’re wrong. It’s been a deliberate move to bring Microsoft’s desired 2.4 children demographic to the Xbox brand, before going all out with the home media centre shift.

Of course, all of this remains educated speculation on my part, but watch closely when the next Xbox is unveiled. There will be first-party games. Oh yes, of course there will be first-party games. There will be Halo, and probably some iteration of Fable, and a bunch of Kinect party stuff from Rare. But the games section of the reveal will be only one part of the show. But the overall tone and focus will be very different to those of the machine’s predecessors, I can almost guarantee it.

[Yojoe36]

Interesting Article on the future of XBox, Including motion controls in GamesRadar...

I think he might be right! We'll all be living like Minority Report soon!

http://www.gamesrada...-games-console/

I personally find it pointless. I have a computer 2 feet away from my Xbox. I'd sooner use a mouse and keyboard, and be able to access it all with better software.

If I had the money to get a big ass monster of a PC which costs a ridiculous £2000, and didn't need to be updated every year with hardware which costs £100's, then I'd easily be a PC gamer. Unfortunately that isn't reality

[Haydos]

Article sounds a bit bitter