The PlayStation Move. It’s funny to think just 15 months have passed since Sony first unveiled its motion controller, and now we’re mere weeks away from hitting the retail market. To be sure, it’s not like the company didn’t have waggle on the mind already — patents dating as far back as 2005 reveal as much, and of course the incredible success of Nintendo’s Wii proved there’s a market for more physically exerting gameplay. And it’s not just PlayStation; Microsoft’s got its controller-free Kinect motion camera system coming this November. So, in the year where all major game consoles now ask you to get off the couch and earn arm muscle, how does Move fare? Read on for more!
Hardware
To borrow a bit from our previous coverage, PlayStation Move is a motion controller system with sensors to detect the player’s movements and translate them into gameplay. The primary remote is just about the size of the Nintendo Wii remote / attached MotionPlus combination. Where Move departs from the Wii is that while the Wii detects movement with its built-in accelerometers, pointing (with the sensor bar) or even detecting exact orientation (with the addition of MotionPlus), Move can be tracked precisely within real 3D space instead of just inferring relative movement based on your previous position. For gameplay, this means you’ll be performing fewer of those cute little flicks Wii pros have become so fond of — most gameplay motions require a full and complete movement on Move — but it also means interesting things for augmented reality. Of course, for AR you need a camera, and lucky for Sony it has the PlayStation Eye already on the market. In fact, the Move system is partly based on what the Eye can detect of those cute colored balls at the end of each Move controller, which helps the PlayStation know how far away from the camera the controller is, and map, say, a tennis racket exactly to a user’s hand.
Each wireless Move controller has the four familiar symbol buttons surrounding a new “Move” button, which generally functions as the OK / Accept command input. Under that is the PS button that takes you to the XMB. There’s a “T” trigger button on the underside, and on the butt we’ve got two ports: a mini-USB for charging / syncing and an additional “extension connector” (as it’s called in the accompanying manual). When we asked SCEA reps what the mystery port was for, all we got in return was an ominous “TBD.” Perhaps it has something to do with that 1950s style ray gun we espied back at E3.
The controller itself is really comfortable to hold, the contours resting perfectly in our hands. Every button is easy to reach, although the 45-degree counter clockwise twist of the command buttons did confuse us a bit initially. The Move controller’s not just for games, either — it can be used to navigate the top menu by holding down the T button to initiate movement and then tilting in the appropriate direction. Sensitivity can be adjusted, but we found the default to be very manageable. We’ve discussed lag before, and while it does vary from game to game with any controller (motion and otherwise), overall we can say there wasn’t anything notably jarring — although that said, we weren’t playing anything as twitchy as a first-person shooter.
Though not part of any of the bundles, Sony’s also releasing a companion Navigation Controller (also wireless) that you’ll be able to wield with your off hand for more traditional analog controls. It’s got a joystick in the standard position, a directional pad just underneath, as well as additional ‘X’ and ‘O’ buttons (generally used as “accept” and “cancel” in most games). Below that is another XMB menu button, and on the underside are L1 and L2 triggers. Mind you, if you’ve already got a DualShock 3 lying around, there’s no reason to drop $30 on one of these sticks — it can be can be used interchangeably — but comparatively-speaking the joystick here is a good bit more convenient.
Sports Champions
This is the Move’s flagship title — its “Wii Sports,” if you will, and in more ways than one. Sports Champions is a collection of titles aimed at showcasing the controller’s potential, culled largely from tech demos we’ve seen since its initial unveil. We’re looking at six sports in all: Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Beach Volleyball, Archery, Table Tennis, and Bocce. Each sub-game requires a quick calibration before beginning, whereby you stand in the appropriate spot (denoted by brackets overlaying the Eye’s visual monitor) and hold the controller at shoulder level, down at your side, and then in front of your belt buckle — or the general area where one might be. Even if you’re using two motion controllers at once (more on that later), only the dominant hand is used for calibration. The process takes seconds, so despite doing it before every single game, it never really bothered us to have to repeat.
Table tennis was frustrating on the Wii given some of the liberties Nintendo’s controller takes in 1:1 motion mapping, but here, a number of us on staff (including Show Producer and Pong Aficionado™ Chad Mumm) found the system here much more accurate — and less frustrating — than our many experiences using the Wii remote. Not only does the paddle’s angle look and feel pretty precise, but the Eye is used to detect which direction you’re facing and adjusts your virtual character accordingly. Each game has three difficulty levels — bronze, silver, and gold. Here, while it felt as if bronze would let you swing as obnoxiously as possible and still hit the ball in bounds, gold was far from forgiving. If you put a hard spin on the ball, it’d fly off the table. Unlike on Wii, however, we never felt as if it was an inaccurate and frustrating failure — it was obvious to us that we had a bad swing.
