Get Your Move On!

Ever since the Wii hit the market, the conventional rules of video gaming have been shattered. The image of the lazy nerd sitting in the basement with pizza and a controller has been transformed into fitness-hungry beautiful people advertising for that new Wii fitness package. The demographics of the video gaming world have shifted, and after the huge success of the Wii, the other video game console companies are shipping their motion-controlled accessories this holiday season.

After the break we will take a look at all three systems, and compare their features. While each system brings its own share of exciting new features, they will most surely also introduce problems. We will take a look at the strengths of each system and possible issues.

Nintendo Wii

The Wii uses motion sensors to transfer player movement to the TV screen. While the controller in its base form includes an accelerometer only, an additional gyroscope can be connected, dubbed the "Wii Motion Plus". While the accelerometer alone leaves an ambiguity between motion and position, the gyroscope allows the game distinguish clearly between the two. An example: While the bundled Tennis game classifies moves as one of the few predefined ones, such as a high hit or low hit, the newer ping-pong variant precisely reflects the position of your hand through the racket on-screen. It really is a huge difference and has helped make the platform much more interesting.

Overall it can be said that the Wii really changed the rules of the game, bringing things such as fitness, previously unheard of in the video gaming world, to the living rooms. This in turn greatly increased the target audience and brought many "non-gamers" to the platform. In the end it helped Nintendo, who was trailing behind in the console wars, to reclaim their spot as number one in terms of sales.

So naturally the competition wants a piece of the cake, and both Sony and Microsoft have announced their motion-controlled platforms scheduled for the 2010 holiday season. So let's take a look at the new controlling schemes and evaluate their pros an cons. Does the formula Kinect > Move > Wii hold?

Sony Move

The Sony Move uses motion capturing technology to capture the player's movements similar to the way Hollywood captures stunt actor's performances: The player holds a series of markers - in this case glowing "orbs" - which the camera can track. Sony's controller setup looks much like the Wii's, and internally Sony's controllers sport accelerometers just like the Wiimote. While the camera tracks position, the sensors track motion and rotation and can give the console feedback even when the orb is not visible. All in all, this the most complex setup of all consoles, but it is in fact often compared to the Wii. This of course, is problematic for marketing the device, which is neither as impressing as Kinect nor does it diverge far enough from the Wii. Sony seems impressed by it, and share their conviction in the following video ad:

The ad makes a stab at both the Wii and Kinect, and hints at a well-known drawback of the Wii's system: You can "fool" the system to interpret moves by minimally moving the controller. The console has no way of knowing the extent of the movement (not without extensive analysis of the sensory input at least), and so any slight movement will do. The Sony Move on the other hand can map the position of the orb directly into 3D space, so it can capture every movement and its extent with much greater accuracy. To remind you of the impressive things that can be done with the Sony Move, check out this recent video of a Move developer - one of many, which he has released over the previous months:

So at first glance this all seems very nice. However, there are some drawbacks: First of all, you obviously must be visible for the camera. Some people were disappointed when they found out that the Move supports only up to 4 players, and even then, that it does not support 2 controllers per player in this setup. But really - how, in a standard living room, can you cram 4 players in front of the camera and have all of their orbs visible? This is a not a problem with the Wii, where you just need to be in range of the console's wireless connection to the Wiimote, and not have to worry about a camera "seeing" your Wiimote.

Another issue, that may not be so obvious from the tech demos is something that the Wii shares: The system cannot distinguish between body movement (such as running from side to side) and arm movement. As many of the tech demos show an augmented reality setup - that is with a virtual object being overlaid on the video input - this flaw does not become apparent. However, if you had a virtual character onscreen he will most likely not mimic the movements you are making due to this ambiguity. Some demos that I have seen solve this problem by omitting the character entirely, and just showing your controlled object (such as your paddle in a ping-pong game) floating in mid air. Other games require you to do a wing-span check, where you need to stretch your arms out first while holding the controller so that the console can calibrate character movements to your arm movements. A third possibility is the one shown in the latest video, that I posted above: If the camera uses face tracking on top of orb tracking, it can actually approximate the position of your body. However, the technical, performance and multi-player implications of this method remain to be seen, and this moves us very close into Kinect territory, which we shall examine next.

Microsoft Kinect

The Kinect package for the XBox is by far the most technically advanced and exciting system among the three. Here a series of sensors, including an RGB camera, a depth camera and a multi-array microphone capture the player's entire body and can understand spoken commands. The system interprets the exact position of the player and his arms and legs. Apparently, the system is precise enough to notice when a player's foot rotates up and down (to accelerate in a racing game) or even the players individual fingers, if he is close enough to the camera. The company's early teaser (when it was still called Natal) surely caused a lot of excitement:

But while this system is the only one that can reliably distinguish between arm movement and body movement, Sony did ask a valid question in its teaser: Do people actually want to play without a controller? How would a first person shooter be played?

Judging from Microsoft's XBox event from June, such games are not meant for the Kinect, as most of the demoed games were sports or fitness oriented. And though it was not always the case (some games show the "skeleton" of the player on screen), it did seem that many of the games did what the Wii did before the release of the Motion Plus: Player movements are not translated one-to-one to movements on screen, but rather classified as one of a number of predefined movements, and then executed. This causes not only a visible delay, but also an unnatural jerkiness to the movements carried out, and generally leaves a feeling of much greater restriction. Of course, these are just my observations from the event, so I could be wrong. Furthermore, the system has not been released yet, so maybe there is just some polishing left to be done. (Unfortunately, I am not able to find a video of the event. I had watched it live in June. Here is a transcript however at Engadget).

In the end, I believe one of the crucial aspects for the Kinect's success will be how reliably it works, and how easy it is to setup. Even with the Wii's MotionPlus there is now an extra calibration step, which can be very annoying and which takes some of the simplicity of the original Wii setup. If the Kinect or the Move require tedious calibration, possibly again and again during gameplay, that may be a serious blow to the game's overall enjoyment. Time will tell whether this is the case.

Summary

While I find the Kinect the most intriguing, I do not think there is a clear winner. I probably find the Kinect most exciting as I would like to use a console for sport and fitness. I believe only the Kinect can accurately detect the position of my body, and will be able to provide a much more realistic and professional workout experience than the Wii, which currently just guesses what I am doing through a few sensors (and praises you with "Great Work!" while you are shaking the controller when you should be doing push ups, or scolds you that you are not doing anything while you are working out like crazy). Especially for someone like me, who has a very bad posture, I am hoping for a system that can tell you if you are working out correctly, or if you are just making things worse for your already bad back. Whether the Kinect will be able to do this I do not know, but I think it is the only system that has the possibility of providing such functionality.

If, however, you are more into general games and would like more action, I think the Sony Move is the thing for you. It will be much more precise than the Kinect, and when you need combat actions like aiming and shooting, you will really want to have a controller in your hands.

Finally, I still believe the Wii has its place. It is still by far the cheapest as it does not require the purchase of a "base" console and another purchase of the additional motion-controlled accessory. It is probably the most casual among the three, allowing you (and friends) to remain sitting on the couch while playing golf or tennis, and you do not have to worry about any camera's field of vision.

All in all, I think it's great that so many interesting concepts are coming to the video gaming world. The thought that your personal level of fitness may one day determine how good you are at Street Fighter sounds not only incredibly exciting, but may also help with the huge problems of obesity and laziness we are seeing today.