/Rant - Motion Controllers

Since before E3 i've been hearing endless comments about 'oh, Kinect is just a copy of the Eyetoy' or 'Move is just a Wiimote'... For the most part, this is wrong, so i'm gonna lay out the basics and key differences between the new motion controllers and their older comparisons.


Move - Wiimote

At it's most basic level, the Playstation Move IS a lot like the Wiimote, both in function and appearance. One of the major difference's though is that the Move is much more accurate. That big bright ball on the end actually allows the Eyetoy (and yes, Playstation Move also requires an Eyetoy / Playstation Eye to function) to judge not just the position of the controller but it's distance from the screen, a function that was later added to the Wiimote in the form of Motion Plus. Even with Motion Plus, the Wiimote is still outdone by Move though, because Move uses the sensor ball, in conjunction with it's built in tilt sensors to more accurately judge the location and position of the controller. The downside of the Playstation Move is that it's extra controller doesn't actually contain any motion sensing devices, so to play a game that requires the movement of both hands, you will need TWO of the main Move controllers.

Kinect - Eyetoy

At first glance you just see a camera in both cases, However Microsoft's Kinect camera is actually much more high tech than the Sony equivalent. The Eyetoy is pretty much your standard webcam with a built-in microphone. It detects your movement and triggers the game commands based on where you move to. Kinect is a much newer technology that actually allows the camera to read in a more three dimensional view. Kinect can detect not just your outline but entire movements (including movement in front of your body) and uses a skeletal structure to apply movements to an actual on screen character. What this means is that when Kinect looks at you it roughly fits your shape to a stick figure of sorts, so when it detects your arm move, it can take the stick figure movement and apply it to the on screen character to mimic you. This system also allows for much more sophisticated tasks, such as gesture recognition (at E3 they demonstrated how someone signed onto an Xbox just by waving to the camera). The camera uses the same system to allow up to four people to be tracked at the same time. The downside to all this is that the whole process is bound to be more taxing on processing and therefore can become less accurate at times. Kinect also features an array of microphones that still do pretty much the same task as the Eyetoy's but are better at detecting and capturing sounds.

The one thing they all have in common?... Horrible names.