Games Thirst – Amazing Life
Sony’s R&D Manager of Special Projects, Dr Richard Marks, said recently that they toyed around with z-cams, the same type included in Kinect, but in the end they decided against it. Instead Sony integrated buttons into Move because, according to them, “buttons are [needed] to have certain kinds of experiences”.
“I’m still a heavy proponent of 3D cameras,” Marks said in an interview with Digital Foundry. “I think they’re really interesting technology. We had many different 3D camera prototypes and we had our game teams look into that to evaluate what they could do with it. There are some experiences that it can do that are really neat but there just weren’t enough experiences that made it make enough sense as a platform-level controller.
He continued: “Coming back is that sometimes we need buttons to have certain kinds of experiences. Other times we need more precision than we can get out of those cameras. We need to know exactly what you’re doing with your hands, especially in the more hardcore experiences.”
Asked whether that type of technology limits the games that could be made, Marks replied:
If it’s just that 3D camera, yeah I guess. That’s what we ran into with EyeToy. When you have only the camera, it’s a magical feeling but sometimes you just wish you could select something. I don’t want to wave to click a button.”
Both Move and Kinect will be out later this year. Will you be picking up any? Share your thoughts.
