For this being labeled as the Information Era there is quite a bit of disinformation circulating around the upcoming PlayStation Move controller.
So much indeed, that despite the amount of official data, interviews and impressions available all over the Internet, erroneous assumptions or convictions still emerge in forums discussions. And the controller launch is just two months away!
Feeling the needed to try and amend this, I have put together the most common myths about the PlayStation Move technology I've stumbled upon in the last couple of weeks. To debunk them. Or rectify them. Or to just give them a positive spin. You decide.
Warning: it's a long read.
01 The PlayStation Move costs too much
While a single PlayStation Move motion controller comes at an affordable manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $49.99/€39.99/£39.99, you also need to purchase a PlayStation Eye camera for it to actually work. The MSRP for a PlayStation Eye camera is $39.99/€29.99*/£24.99, which means the PlayStation Move + PlayStation Eye combo would cost you as much as $89.98/€69.98/£64.98. That's more than the price of a brand new double layer special edition PS3 game.
But is that really how much you are eventually going to spend to start moving?
Of course you don't need to be told that a suggested retail price is typically higher than the actual price of a given product, as some retailers try to steal customers from one another by playing at the "who sells it at less" game. As a matter of fact, in some stores you can already pre-order the PlayStation Move motion controller and buy the PlayStation Eye camera for about 13% less than their respective MSRP.
That said, and most importantly, Sony has put together official PlayStation Move motion controller + PlayStation Eye camera bundles that go for a MSRP of €59.99/£59.99 in Europe (includes a demo disc) and of $99.99 in US (includes the full game Sports Champions, which alone costs $39.99). Depending on your region, that's between 7% and 32% less than what you'd spend by purchasing the PlayStation Move motion controller and the PlayStation Eye camera separately. And again, these are suggested prices. You can actually find these bundles at a bit less than what Sony suggests.
Overall, the whole PlayStation Move motion controller + PlayStation Eye camera set-up costs just a few bucks more than a Wii Motion Controller with Motion Plus (which goes for a MSRP of $49.99/€49.99/£49.99). This is objectively quite an honest price point, for what you are getting. Which brings us to the next myth.
*The current European MSRP for the PlayStation Eye camera is €39.99. Sony Europe will drop the price to €29.99 at PlayStation Move launch. Oddly SCEA seems to like the $39.99 price tag more.
02 The PlayStation Eye is a glorified sensor bar
It just sits there to track the colored sphere on the top of the PlayStation Move motion controller, doesn't it?
No, it doesn't.
The PlayStation Eye is actually a protagonist of the whole Sony motion gaming proposition. It does body motion tracking and face recognition, allowing for stuff like dodging bullets in The Shoot by simply bending your upper body or looking to the sides in cockpit view in Gran Turismo 5 by simply rotating your head in the direction you want to look at.
It also does voice recognition thanks to the built-in microphone array. This is not an exclusive Kinetc feature, mind you. The necessary software library is already out there and supports 20 different languages (plus "Engrish").
There is more the PlayStation Eye camera brings to the table, but for the purpose of this article let's ignore stuff like shapes recognition (EyePet) and barcode scanning (Eye of Judgment, LittleBigPlanet 2).
Hands-free/motion control related stuff aside, you can use the PlayStation Eye to voice chat in any PS3 online game, video chat through the XMB, share your SingStar performance with the community and, most importantly, finally earn that Trophy you are missing in Burnout Paradise.
03 You need the Navigation controller to play some games
Actually, you can pretend it doesn’t even exist and still enjoy all the games that "support" it.
This is because you can use the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller instead, by holding it with your left hand. In fact, aside from those X and O buttons (more on this later), all the controls available on the Navigation controller are the very same you can find on the left side of the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller, just rearranged for better ergonomics.
Basically, the Navigation controller is functionally half a Sixaxis/DualShock3, that one half you need to move around with the stick, operate on the D-pad and press the L1 and L2* shoulder buttons, while pointing and do motions with the other hand.
Holding the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller with one hand isn’t the most comfortable proposition for sure, but it’s not that bad either since you can actually sit down and let your lap sustain it. Try it.
As for those X and O button you see on the Navigation controller, they are there so that it can be used solo as a remote of sorts for simple operations like selecting content on the XMB. They do not represent extra face buttons developers can assign extra functions to. Functions assigned to the X/O buttons on the PlayStation Move motion controller are simply mirrored on the X/O buttons on the Navigation controller.
*The L2 trigger on the Navigation controller is different than the one on the Sixaxis/DualShock3 in that it is concave rather than convex. At a MSRP of $29.99/€29.99/£29.99 it’s hard to resist the temptation.
04 You need to buy extra batteries
Just like the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller, both the PlayStation Move motion and the navigation controllers come with a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery as well as a USB-mini socket for easy charging via the very same USB cable sold with every PS3. Basically, you don’t need to buy anything to keep your Move controllers operational.
But if you don’t mind spending $29.99/€29.99/£29.99 (MSRP) for a dedicated and independent charging solution, Sony has you served with the quite cool looking “Charging Station”, which allows to charge two PlayStation Move motion or navigation controllers (or one motion and one navigation controller) at once without connecting them to the PS3.
05 You can't play in low light condition
The sphere at the top of the PlayStation Move motion controller lights up via an internal RGB LED, hence it is perfectly visible by the PlayStation Eye camera even in pitch black darkness.
As for the PlayStation Eye camera potentially not being able to do face tracking and that sorts of body recognition operations in a low light environment, tests conducted with some of the games already compatible with the device have yield encouraging results. Overall, the PlayStation Eye camera can see through darkness much better than the old EyeToy, as this comparison pictures show.
EyeToy (top) vs PlayStation Eye (bottom) - Both pictures where taken in bad light condition (a small lamp and the HDTV screen as the only light sources in the room). It borders night vision performance.
06 The PlayStation Move drains power from the system
This is obviously true as nothing comes for free, but the actual myth to be debunked here is the belief that the HD graphics we usually enjoy on the PS3 are to be severely affected in games designed for the PlayStation Move due to all the image processing work going on in the background. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides what was stated by the head of Sony World Wide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, just a few days ago, when such a good looking game as Killzone 3 is known to be coming with built-in support of the PlayStation Move controller, there is very little to be worried about. Same can be said about the performance of Gran Turismo 5, apparently unaffected by the support of face tracking technology.
07 Add-ons have always failed. This is no different
History tells us that game console add-ons are doomed to fail. Unless it's not a fitness device the shape of a bathroom scale, whatever extra hardware you bring to a system during its life cycle it will eventually turn into a dust collector. It just wont be supported enough by the developer community to be successful.
Worringly, this is exactly what happened with the EyeToy and the PlayStation Eye, the first two steps in the evolution of the technology the PlayStation Move controller is building and expanding upon. Is history about to repeat itself? We wont go into explaining why this is not going to happen this time (that's for another post perhaps), but a simple look at the current software release schedule for the PlayStation Move offers an interesting indication about the future of the platform.
There are currently more than 40 announced games supporting the PlayStation Move, all coming out within next 7 months. The current catalog of PS2 and PS3 games which support either the EyeToy or the PlayStation Eye lists about 90 entries (including the most "who cares" implementations of the technology, like taking pictures of yourself). That's more than double the PlayStation Move compatible games announced thus far, but it was built in7 years.
It's definitely a good start for the PlayStation Move, and while its adoption rate doesn't have a chance to meet the requirements needed to achieve the "de facto PS3 controller" status (perhaps just the second), the good news is that the apparent ease of implementing the Sony motion control method on top of the traditional one (as well as the non-distruptive nature of it) will have developers considering PlayStation Move support more often than dismissing it as a waste of time. Not to mention those already working on Wii games. They might actually squeeze some extra money out of the motion controller business.
08 The PlayStation Move controller doesn't rumble
It does!
09 The bulb on top of the PlayStation Move is fragile
That "bulb" is not made of hard plastic, but rather of a squeezable rubber material. Which means that the sphere (which is empty as well) would actually be the only element of the device surviving multiple rage stomps. Not to mention it would save your HDTV if you accidentally toss the controller to the screen, but are lucky enough so that it lands on it with the sphere. You can even massage the sphere after such an event occurs for some post-traumatic stress relief!
10 You need two motion controllers to play some games
Not "some", but just one. Out of the 41 games announced thus far to be supporting the device, there is only one game which requires the player to hold a PlayStation Move motion controller in each hand. And that's the street boxing game The Fight: Lights Out.
The other game you might be thinking about is Sports Champions, which includes a couple of games that support two motion controllers (archery and gladiator) but that's optional rather than mandatory. You can play those games with just one motion controller.
Overall, rather than a sign of things to come, these examples of dual-wand gaming are testaments of the possibilities the PlayStation Move technology opens up to the developers. Your money will ultimately decide how much these kind of applications will spread.
So much indeed, that despite the amount of official data, interviews and impressions available all over the Internet, erroneous assumptions or convictions still emerge in forums discussions. And the controller launch is just two months away!
Feeling the needed to try and amend this, I have put together the most common myths about the PlayStation Move technology I've stumbled upon in the last couple of weeks. To debunk them. Or rectify them. Or to just give them a positive spin. You decide.
Warning: it's a long read.
01 The PlayStation Move costs too much
While a single PlayStation Move motion controller comes at an affordable manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $49.99/€39.99/£39.99, you also need to purchase a PlayStation Eye camera for it to actually work. The MSRP for a PlayStation Eye camera is $39.99/€29.99*/£24.99, which means the PlayStation Move + PlayStation Eye combo would cost you as much as $89.98/€69.98/£64.98. That's more than the price of a brand new double layer special edition PS3 game.
But is that really how much you are eventually going to spend to start moving?
Of course you don't need to be told that a suggested retail price is typically higher than the actual price of a given product, as some retailers try to steal customers from one another by playing at the "who sells it at less" game. As a matter of fact, in some stores you can already pre-order the PlayStation Move motion controller and buy the PlayStation Eye camera for about 13% less than their respective MSRP.
That said, and most importantly, Sony has put together official PlayStation Move motion controller + PlayStation Eye camera bundles that go for a MSRP of €59.99/£59.99 in Europe (includes a demo disc) and of $99.99 in US (includes the full game Sports Champions, which alone costs $39.99). Depending on your region, that's between 7% and 32% less than what you'd spend by purchasing the PlayStation Move motion controller and the PlayStation Eye camera separately. And again, these are suggested prices. You can actually find these bundles at a bit less than what Sony suggests.
Overall, the whole PlayStation Move motion controller + PlayStation Eye camera set-up costs just a few bucks more than a Wii Motion Controller with Motion Plus (which goes for a MSRP of $49.99/€49.99/£49.99). This is objectively quite an honest price point, for what you are getting. Which brings us to the next myth.
*The current European MSRP for the PlayStation Eye camera is €39.99. Sony Europe will drop the price to €29.99 at PlayStation Move launch. Oddly SCEA seems to like the $39.99 price tag more.
02 The PlayStation Eye is a glorified sensor bar
It just sits there to track the colored sphere on the top of the PlayStation Move motion controller, doesn't it?
No, it doesn't.
The PlayStation Eye is actually a protagonist of the whole Sony motion gaming proposition. It does body motion tracking and face recognition, allowing for stuff like dodging bullets in The Shoot by simply bending your upper body or looking to the sides in cockpit view in Gran Turismo 5 by simply rotating your head in the direction you want to look at.
It also does voice recognition thanks to the built-in microphone array. This is not an exclusive Kinetc feature, mind you. The necessary software library is already out there and supports 20 different languages (plus "Engrish").
There is more the PlayStation Eye camera brings to the table, but for the purpose of this article let's ignore stuff like shapes recognition (EyePet) and barcode scanning (Eye of Judgment, LittleBigPlanet 2).
Hands-free/motion control related stuff aside, you can use the PlayStation Eye to voice chat in any PS3 online game, video chat through the XMB, share your SingStar performance with the community and, most importantly, finally earn that Trophy you are missing in Burnout Paradise.
03 You need the Navigation controller to play some games
Actually, you can pretend it doesn’t even exist and still enjoy all the games that "support" it.
This is because you can use the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller instead, by holding it with your left hand. In fact, aside from those X and O buttons (more on this later), all the controls available on the Navigation controller are the very same you can find on the left side of the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller, just rearranged for better ergonomics.
Basically, the Navigation controller is functionally half a Sixaxis/DualShock3, that one half you need to move around with the stick, operate on the D-pad and press the L1 and L2* shoulder buttons, while pointing and do motions with the other hand.
Holding the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller with one hand isn’t the most comfortable proposition for sure, but it’s not that bad either since you can actually sit down and let your lap sustain it. Try it.
As for those X and O button you see on the Navigation controller, they are there so that it can be used solo as a remote of sorts for simple operations like selecting content on the XMB. They do not represent extra face buttons developers can assign extra functions to. Functions assigned to the X/O buttons on the PlayStation Move motion controller are simply mirrored on the X/O buttons on the Navigation controller.
*The L2 trigger on the Navigation controller is different than the one on the Sixaxis/DualShock3 in that it is concave rather than convex. At a MSRP of $29.99/€29.99/£29.99 it’s hard to resist the temptation.
04 You need to buy extra batteries
Just like the Sixaxis/DualShock3 controller, both the PlayStation Move motion and the navigation controllers come with a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery as well as a USB-mini socket for easy charging via the very same USB cable sold with every PS3. Basically, you don’t need to buy anything to keep your Move controllers operational.
But if you don’t mind spending $29.99/€29.99/£29.99 (MSRP) for a dedicated and independent charging solution, Sony has you served with the quite cool looking “Charging Station”, which allows to charge two PlayStation Move motion or navigation controllers (or one motion and one navigation controller) at once without connecting them to the PS3.
05 You can't play in low light condition
The sphere at the top of the PlayStation Move motion controller lights up via an internal RGB LED, hence it is perfectly visible by the PlayStation Eye camera even in pitch black darkness.
As for the PlayStation Eye camera potentially not being able to do face tracking and that sorts of body recognition operations in a low light environment, tests conducted with some of the games already compatible with the device have yield encouraging results. Overall, the PlayStation Eye camera can see through darkness much better than the old EyeToy, as this comparison pictures show.
EyeToy (top) vs PlayStation Eye (bottom) - Both pictures where taken in bad light condition (a small lamp and the HDTV screen as the only light sources in the room). It borders night vision performance.
06 The PlayStation Move drains power from the system
This is obviously true as nothing comes for free, but the actual myth to be debunked here is the belief that the HD graphics we usually enjoy on the PS3 are to be severely affected in games designed for the PlayStation Move due to all the image processing work going on in the background. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides what was stated by the head of Sony World Wide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, just a few days ago, when such a good looking game as Killzone 3 is known to be coming with built-in support of the PlayStation Move controller, there is very little to be worried about. Same can be said about the performance of Gran Turismo 5, apparently unaffected by the support of face tracking technology.
07 Add-ons have always failed. This is no different
History tells us that game console add-ons are doomed to fail. Unless it's not a fitness device the shape of a bathroom scale, whatever extra hardware you bring to a system during its life cycle it will eventually turn into a dust collector. It just wont be supported enough by the developer community to be successful.
Worringly, this is exactly what happened with the EyeToy and the PlayStation Eye, the first two steps in the evolution of the technology the PlayStation Move controller is building and expanding upon. Is history about to repeat itself? We wont go into explaining why this is not going to happen this time (that's for another post perhaps), but a simple look at the current software release schedule for the PlayStation Move offers an interesting indication about the future of the platform.
There are currently more than 40 announced games supporting the PlayStation Move, all coming out within next 7 months. The current catalog of PS2 and PS3 games which support either the EyeToy or the PlayStation Eye lists about 90 entries (including the most "who cares" implementations of the technology, like taking pictures of yourself). That's more than double the PlayStation Move compatible games announced thus far, but it was built in7 years.
It's definitely a good start for the PlayStation Move, and while its adoption rate doesn't have a chance to meet the requirements needed to achieve the "de facto PS3 controller" status (perhaps just the second), the good news is that the apparent ease of implementing the Sony motion control method on top of the traditional one (as well as the non-distruptive nature of it) will have developers considering PlayStation Move support more often than dismissing it as a waste of time. Not to mention those already working on Wii games. They might actually squeeze some extra money out of the motion controller business.
08 The PlayStation Move controller doesn't rumble
It does!
09 The bulb on top of the PlayStation Move is fragile
That "bulb" is not made of hard plastic, but rather of a squeezable rubber material. Which means that the sphere (which is empty as well) would actually be the only element of the device surviving multiple rage stomps. Not to mention it would save your HDTV if you accidentally toss the controller to the screen, but are lucky enough so that it lands on it with the sphere. You can even massage the sphere after such an event occurs for some post-traumatic stress relief!
10 You need two motion controllers to play some games
Not "some", but just one. Out of the 41 games announced thus far to be supporting the device, there is only one game which requires the player to hold a PlayStation Move motion controller in each hand. And that's the street boxing game The Fight: Lights Out.
The other game you might be thinking about is Sports Champions, which includes a couple of games that support two motion controllers (archery and gladiator) but that's optional rather than mandatory. You can play those games with just one motion controller.
Overall, rather than a sign of things to come, these examples of dual-wand gaming are testaments of the possibilities the PlayStation Move technology opens up to the developers. Your money will ultimately decide how much these kind of applications will spread.
