2010-09-13

Sony has a problem.


This is that problem.

Sony has ignored, at least aesthetically, and likely functionally, that we have come to expect new features to be seamless. Wii motion control doesn't have a giant ping pong ball on the end of it. An iPhone and other smart phones have motion sensors that don't have ping pong balls hanging off of them. Laptops with motion sensors don't have ping pong balls to detect sudden drops and park the hard drive. Yet, Sony is directly marketing their total lack of understanding of how to seamlessly integrate a modern feature into their system. The only visual notice you have of motion control on Wii is the sensor bar. On XBOX the upcoming Kinect does motion with out a controller but tries to solve that by throwing a large amount of video, audio and sensor processing at the problem. That may well be an overkill approach to simple control compared to just putting motion sensors in existing controllers, however it allows a broad range of extended uses such as biometric recognition. Overall, simple motion control is a problem that was solved by proximity sensors and 3 axis accelerometers, which Nintendo and Sony seem to have successfully implemented. Sony just couldn't seem to get over the "look at us, we are hip and trendy again" goiter on the end of their controller that directly signals that Sony just doesn't get it.

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