Tag Archives: motion-sensing

EA boss John Riccitiello said tonight that EA is “positive” on the opportunities afforded by both Natal and PS3′s upcoming motion controller, saying the company will support both and announce its plans for the new peripherals next year.

“We’re really positive on both,” said the exec, speaking in the firm’s Q1 investor call.

“Our view is that motion-based gaming is something that is both going to drive install base, drive interest and drive growth. We’re positive overall.”

He added: “We’re planning to support both. We haven’t yet announced our plans to do so, but we shall do so in the right time-frame for that, which is likely to be early- to mid-2010.”

Natal and the PS3 motion-tech are dateless at the moment, although Natal is expected towards the end of 2010.

SCEE R&D boss Paul Holman told Edge at Develop this week that PS3′s upcoming motion technology will cause advancement in games thanks to its precision.

“I think we can just say that it’s very, very precise,” he said. “People are going to be able to take games in this space forward because of the precision aspects.”

Kish Hirani, head of dev services, gave an example.

“The classic example I give to people is that the most precise thing you can do is write your name using a [piece of] chalk on a blackboard,” he said.

“Try doing that with a mouse and it’s bloody difficult.”

More through there. Sony showed the tech in action at the UK conference yesterday.

In case you missed it in the PS motion tech keynote liveblog from Develop yesterday, Sony confirmed that PS Eye can already recognise faces.

The SCEE research and development guys said the peripheral is capable of detecting the “position and direction” of your head, the “gender and age of face” and smiles.

It can also detect different parts of the face, such as nose, mouth and eyes.

The camera was shown being used with the company’s motion tech in the Brighton session yesterday, although the demo was the same stuff shown at E3.

SCEE will show its Sony motion tech at Develop in Brighton this morning, and we’re liveblogging the session after the link.

The firm promises to show “a lot more about the new PS3 controller shown at E3,” giving “several real-world examples of such techniques as used in recent and soon to be released PS3 and PSP titles from both Sony Computer Entertainment first party and external developers.”

Missable? Not really. We’ll be filming it as well, so we’ll aim to get video live as soon as we can after it’s over.

The session runs from 11.00am-12.00pm BST.

More »

EA Sports boss Peter Moore’s told IndustryGamers that motion tech shown by both Sony and Microsoft at E3 this year will push the sports segment in general, but specifically the fitness sector.

“It’s a huge opportunity for sports,” he said. “We’re already working on it, we’re expecting dev kits to be arriving very soon.

“Both are different technologies – one obviously has a controller and the other one your body is a controller. I think there’s already a lot of learnings we have right now with our Wii [products] and certainly there’s stuff with EA Sports Active that we could apply to both platforms.

“Fitness is a huge play for us and will continue to be a huge play for us, and this just makes the opportunity bigger, to say the least.”

Hit the link for the full interview.

It’s Tuesday, a great day to watch American people talk about motion controllers on a website. Luckily, then, Gametrailer has posted its latest Bonus Round, which fulfils that need to the hilt.

It’s GameTrailers’ Geoff Keighley, Shane Satterfield, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and Kotaku’s Michael McWhertor rabbiting on about Natal, and so forth. Complete your morning.

Sony’s patented what looks to be new motion tech that would allow gamers to use everyday objects in play, such as “coffee mugs, drinking glasses, books, bottles, etc.”

There’s tons of detail and diagrams on Siliconera. Thanks, Kotaku.

Microsoft’s Natal and Sony’s new wand motion device could provide a nice revenue bump for first-movers, Sega’s told GI.

“Being the largest third-party publisher on Wii we obviously have good gestural experience so for us I can see an opportunity to get a land grab on some of our competitors by taking our head start in gestural gaming and evolving it,” said Euro MD Gary Dunn.

“I was blown away by it, both systems offer us so many opportunities to do great things with videogames.”

There’s no date on either controller as yet, but “next year” seems a good stab.

There’s a full interview here.

SCEE’s Kish Hirani coding keynote at next month’s Develop conference is to include “much more detail” on Sony’s new motion controller, according to this Develop report.

Apparently, he’ll “also be talking about new vision processing and advanced graphical techniques in the PS3 libraries, using real-world examples from recent and soon-to-be-released PS3 and PSP titles.”

We’ll be there. Develop takes place in Brighton, UK, from July 14-16.

Motion-sensing was a done deal after the popularity of the concept of Wii, Activision president Mike Griffith told GI at E3.

“Those are logical directions for Sony and Microsoft and obviously they’re seeing what everyone else is seeing – that the consumer has responded well to the physical interface of the Wii,” he said.

“This has been their response and I think they are expecting it to expand their audience which will be good for the industry by bringing in additional gamers.”

Griffiths added that Activision support would come provided Natal and PS3′s “wand” device were welcomed by the public.

“We’re always very supportive of their initiatives, we’ve got close relationships with all the first parties and if the consumer is receptive we’ll be supporting them,” he said.

Interview through there.

While Natal and PS3′s motion tech presents a large opportunity for some games, Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot has told CNBC that big action games will most likely continue to be played on traditional controllers.

“The current pad for gamers is giving them a lot,” he said on the subject of whether or not games like Assassin’s Creed or Splinter Cell will be played with motion-sensing.

“They play for hours, so they don’t want to get up and down. They don’t want to be tired after five minutes. These games are about reactivity.”

Guillemot added, however, that he expects as much as 80 percent of the company’s future family games – including Rayman – to utilize motion-sensor controls.

Hit the link for the full thing.

SCEE president Andrew House has called motion-sensing an “essential” element to PS3, speaking to GI at E3.

“That’s one of the essentials,” he said, talking of PS3′s wand-based motion control system premiered in LA earlier this month.

House was quick to expound the machine’s further virtues, however.

“But the PlayStation 3 is also one of the best Blu-ray players around for high-definition movies and that almost gets lost in the mix,” he added.

“That gives it an enormous sense of longevity, people want the best if they are buying into high-definition entertainment from a television standpoint or from a movie standpoint. That’s an inherently long lifecycle and it helps bolster the traditional gaming lifecycle as well.”

There’s a full interview through there.

Satoru Iwata has told the Financial Times that Nintendo previously fiddled around with camera-based motion controls and decided to pass on ‘em.

The firm eventually decided that “accelerometer-based technology”, like what’s in the WiiMote, worked better.

Iwata admitted, however, that the company will wait and see what Microsoft and Sony do before regretting the decision.

“Until they say when they’re releasing it, how much it costs and what software it comes with, we won’t know whether that is the route we should have taken,” he said.

Via Engadget.

SCEA’s Peter Dille told Kotaku at E3 that, while he expects the press conference showing of the company’s PS3 motion tech to be indicative of the final product, what was shown is a “prototype”.

“We’re announcing the technology, not the product or game,” he said.

“He also wanted people to know the form factor of the wand is a prototype. I think it is representative of what the product will include. In other words, it will have buttons. It will have the ability to have a trigger if you’re having that style of game.”

No date, price or name was given to the motion system, which was shown to be based around the Eye camera and a wand.

More through there.

Engadget’s carrying what’s claimed to be a shot of a full-body motion-sensing system for Xbox 360. No shit. There’s a sensor bar, and everything.

Apparently, capabilities include:

• Full body and hand gesture control of games / characters.
• In fighting games you kick, punch, duck, dive, jump and so forth with your body.
• It also picks up small hand gestures like pinching, grabbing and scrolling.
• There will also be video conferencing and games with video.
• Trivia game over the internet with live images of each person playing. When a question pops up, they can clap to buzz in.
• You can “move objects on your screen” and the other party can see what you’re doing in real time.
• Sensor detects only the person playing, not folks observing on the couch.

It’s the future. Now. Hopefully it’s true.

Thanks, Psychotext.

Variety sources are claiming PS3′s much-rumoured motion controller is to be revealed at E3 in June.

As per a patent filed in 2007, the device is thought to be tracked by a small webcam and can read different coloured lights, as well as the shape and angle of each light, making it far more sensitive that the Wii-mote.

Is this true? Very probably. How surprising would it be? Not at all. In any way. You have permission to look tired and all-knowing when they wheel it out in the press conference.

According to this Joystiq story, Microsoft has said outright that there is no truth in yesterday’s speculation that motion-sensing plays a part in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

“There is no truth to this speculation,” said a spokesperson. “Ken’s comment is in reference to rotating the left analog stick while hitting the X-button to move different things in the game.”

The motion-related chatter emerged after Microsoft’s Ken Lobb was heard in a developer commentary saying that, “You basically grab with the wrench and then you twist the controller around and it’ll move different things in the game.”

Microsoft’s staple line for this type of thing is, “We do not comment on rumour and speculation,” so you really can consider this dead. That’s dead. As dodos.

Well, there we are. In what appears to be a tacit admission that Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts features some form of motion sensing, Microsoft’s Ken Lobb has claimed that controller movement will allow things to be moved in the game-world in an IGN dev commentary movie.

“The primary function that Kazooie has in the game is she carries this wrench, and the wrench is used for many different things,” he said.

“One of the things that the wrench is used for is to turn these devices. So you basically grab with the wrench and then you twist the controller around and it’ll move different things in the game.”

The video’s after the break, and the game looks gorgeous. It shows the hub-world of Showdown Town, and everything’s littered with button icons for the normal 360 pad, so are we looking at some sort of add-on for motion stuff? We’ll know next Monday, no doubt.

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Kotaku’s posted a rumour on top of GI’s rumour – making a double-rumour – on the subject of the motion-sensing PlayStation 3 controller, saying that the device doesn’t “break apart” as much, but is made of of smaller, attachable parts.

Apparently you can “wear” sensors on the feet, hands and so on, to control characters on-screen.

Mental. E3 or bust, we reckon.

According to this GamesIndustry story, developers are already in possession of the motion-sensing PlayStation pad – unofficially named “The World’s Worst Kept Secret” – and apparently it’s made of pieces which break apart.

The peripheral was supposedly tested in California this year, and we’ve heard heavy hints that the new bit of plastic is indeed real.

No official comment’s been made yet, but the site expects an E3 announcement.