The Future of Motion Control: How To Improve It

This short video on Sony's blog demonstrates where the PlayStation Move is at in terms of development. Now that the Wii is about to turn four, Sony and Microsoft are both poised to make wigglin' and wagglin' major features of their consoles as well. The Wii's motion controls have failed to deliver on the promise of a total game-changing console. Despite this, the Wii has some real gems but games which actually utilize the motion controls well are few and far between. Today, most gamers still use thumbsticks, shoulder triggers, and face buttons for a majority of their games. Here are a few ways motion controls could finally make games better.

Tighter FPS Navigation

One of the advantages PC FPS fans always claim over the consoles is that a mouse and keyboard are just more precise than a thumbstick. They have a point—your forearm and hand can more quickly and easily settle on a given spot within the square foot of mouse-space than your thumb can in the square inch of thumbstick-space. The ability to be more accurate with snapping your reticule onto your target means the system can afford to be more sensitive to your movements.

The existing Wii technology should be able to pull this off by now. Instead of having the Wii-mote control a targeting reticule that moves around on the screen, why not have the reticule stay in the middle while the rest of the screen moves like all FPSs do? Tilting and holding the Wii-mote left would cause the screen to begin rotating to the left, and then centering the Wii-mote would cause it to stop, but the targeting reticule would remain fixed. Like a mouse, this idea would allow a player's entire arm to get involved, allowing for quicker turns and snappier targeting.

Metroid Prime: Corruption (and the trilogy release) and Red Steel 2 both came close to this idea, but still involved a floating cursor that had to be moved to the side of the screen in order to rotate the player's perspective. That meant that the player's movements were being used for controlling their view and performing point-and-shoot at targets. Neither allowed for the razor-sharp rotation abilities needed for a fast-paced multiplayer FPSes like the Call of Duty or Halo series.

RTS point-and-click

As long as we're comparing motion controls to the venerable mouse, it's worth mentioning another way the former could substitute for the latter on consoles.

There's no reason the Wii can't be running a whole bunch of top-down RTS games right now. You're already using the Wii-mote just like a mouse every time you navigate the main menu. It wouldn't be hard to extend that idea to selecting buildings and dragging boxes around squads of units on the battlefield. One could even use the Wii's ability to measure three axes of movement (a mouse only processes two, the X and Y axis) to give a player some interesting options with top-down or isometric perspectives.

The PlayStation Move video teased the idea of a top-down strategy game, which leaves me wondering why it hasn't been done by now. Motion-controlled RTSes could be an entire new genre for consoles and all the players who don't game on their PCs. Maybe Sony will get on that, and I could even see how Kinect could bring some interesting things to the RTS table.

Double-fist it

While the previous two suggestions involved ways motion controls could help consoles close the gap in some genres where PCs still have the advantage, a two-handed motion-controlled game is something PCs just can't do at all. The Wii's use of two-handed action has been spotty; both The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption had need for an occasional outward thrust of the left fist, but you never had to point, aim, or otherwise maneuver anything with your off-hand. The nunchuck just doesn't have the motion-detection technology for it.

There are many upsides to turning players into real two-fisted badasses. MadWorld presents a taste of how awesome this could be. Like many Wii action games before it, most of MadWorld's combat could have been accomplished just as well with buttons. The swings and gestures didn't give the player any real advantage in control. However, MadWorld hit on something interesting: there is a certain primal, visceral pleasure in throwing a literal haymaker in order to jam a chainsaw-enhanced fist straight through a hapless fool. Sure, you could technically do it just as well with a more restrained gesture, but MadWorld's rhythm and stylish graphics entice you to exaggerate the movement because it feels cool. Buttons can't quite deliver that sensation. And that's in a game where the action is dominated by just one arm.

Red Steel 2 earned praise for blending swordplay and gunplay - imagine never needing to trade between them. You could slash at an enemy and snap your gun up at him in the same breath. The implications for boxing games are obvious. I could see a revitalization in mini-task oriented franchises like Cooking Mama and Trauma Center. Dual-wielding could even mean dual-targeting, with John Woo-style two-gun gunslinging action.