Motion control adding "great moments" to PS3 franchises

Sony has said that its motion control technology is enabling first-party development to create great moments to its existing PlayStation franchises.

That Sony is working hard to incorporate motion control into fan-favourites should please the core gaming audience, and help calm fears that the motion technology is dumbing down home console gaming to pander to a casual audience.

Speaking in an interview published today, Michael Denny, senior VP of Worldwide Studios told GamesIndustry.biz that the company's approach to motion control is two-fold – to work the technology into popular PlayStation franchises, and create new IP designed specifically for the tech from scratch.

"We are looking at original titles that can really showcase the technology, but we also want existing franchises to support motion control where it can really enhance the experience that we're trying to build," detailed Denny.

"With the existing franchises and more core games, it's a way of enhancing those experiences. It's fair to say we have had or we are experiencing some real great moments looking at our existing franchises and putting in that support."

Internal development studios – which include Motorstorm team Evolution, Killzone-creators Guerilla and SingStar house Sony London – are treating the technology as a new platform, said Denny, and are embracing fresh control methods.

"The motion control system we're putting in place going forward is being treating as more of a platform. Here in Europe we have a lot of experience helping develop the peripherals for our social games but we see the motion control solution and experience as being broader than that. We do believe it can come into a core experience as well."

"It was certainly an exciting challenge for the guys and one that the teams have embraced. The key for them is that they want to implement it in a way which is additive to the experiences they could otherwise give with the DualShock," said Denny.

Sony motion control technology was first shown at E3 earlier this year, with a range of tech demo's highlighting simple mini-games and interactions using the motion peripheral as a sword, whip, bow and arrow.

The company originally announced a Spring launch window for the motion control tech, but a leaked document from Sega narrowed the release down to March 2010.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ps3-franchises