Microsoft demagogue and game developer Peter Molyneux has assured us all that Kinect won’t kill videogame controllers. That’s a relief, because Kinect is so hot looking that we were sure it would eliminate all other forms of interactivity. That last sentence was sarcasm.
“Games controllers have been designed for two decades, and they’re not going anywhere, they will continue to evolve,” states Molyneux. “I don’t think motion control, in itself, will cause the death of standard controllers.
“Motion control has been a really interesting concept over the last few years. Though I’m not sure it’s the most important change over the last five years. That would be a difficult one to choose – handheld gaming, social gaming, the cloud, online gameplay.”
Kinect and Move certainly won’t be making any major changes, it seems. With a lot of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles still sticking to controllers, and even a number of Wii games totally ignoring the motion input, it’s clear that there’s still a demand for buttons.
If anything. I’d argue buttons are farmoreintuitive than motion control. After all, we’re far more used to pressing buttons than waggling our arms about. I think sometimes publishers over-estimate how “frightened” casual gamers are of controllers.
