jesta
Moderator
“Realplay uses tilt technology, an accelerometer, along the lines of the way the Wii works. With the Wii, if you’re not pointing the controller at the screen it has no idea where it is. We use a 5G accelerometer whereas Nintendo uses a 2G accelerometer, the difference being that you can move ours around a bit faster before it starts getting confused. If you have a Wii you’re still going to enjoy playing our games but it’s fair to say we’re targeting the kind of people that would want to play the Wii. There’s 12 million or so Wii’s on the market which is an amazing number, but there’s 120 million PlayStation 2s so that’s 108 million people that haven’t got a Wii. That’s our target audience.â€ÂÂ
"Puzzlesphere, a game that involves manipulating a physical sphere around skyline mazes, stood out the most. The early levels sampled were immediately addictive, although whether it will offer great variety in its later stages or keep gamers interested after extended play is yet to be seen."
"It’s impossible to tell how successful the RealPlay series of games will prove on PS2. The titles might lack some of the Nintendo charm but, if they’re any indicator of where In2Games is headed, there’s certainly going to be some next-gen excitement in store. As Holmwood admitted, motion sensing gaming on PS3 and Xbox 360 via In2Games’ next-gen system Freedom, set for release next year, is where it’s really going to be at."
"“When you first start playing Wii Sports it’s enormous fun, you’re jumping around all over the place and making these huge movements, but after a couple of days you end up playing it like this [Holmwood expresses a lack of motion] because you know you can. You can put it on the floor and kick it and it still plays tennis. We’re not criticizing it but accelerometer technology can really only take you so far. It’s good for knowing that you’ve moved but it’s not really that good at knowing in detail what you’ve done and exactly where you are.
“So Freedom can do all the casual Wii-type stuff but it can also go a lot further. Our goal is not just to have throwaway party sports games but in-depth sports simulation games. We’d love to work with EA Sports and bring Tiger Woods to Freedom, we’d love to have Virtua Tennis. Those types of products are much more than knockabout party titles, there’s a lot of subtlety and depth to them.â€ÂÂ
While the RealPlay series of game could prove to be a hit this Christmas, it is next year’s launch of Freedom that may become a real thorn in the Wii's side. As Holmwood says, the ambitious system won’t only offer gamers freedom and choice - crucially it will enable developers and third parties to spread their wings also.
“One of the things that developers tell us about the Wii controller is that a lot of the things that they thought they could do, they can’t do. It kind of limits you to the kind of games that are already out there which is perhaps one of the reasons why Wii sports is still selling so well. People aren’t going out and buying title after title because actually Wii Sports does everything you can do with the Wii.
“My feeling is that most of the good software for Wii will come from Nintendo, as it always does on their platforms, because other publishers just don’t seem to make enough money out of Nintendo to justify the spend. Once we can bring this technology cross-platform I think you’re going to see a wider variety of motion sensing games on the market generally. Freedom is really more of a platform than a controller, whether you’ve got a 360 or a PS3, and lots of people are talking to us about bringing their Wii games onto other formats also.â€ÂÂ
“I don’t think motion sensing gaming is going to eliminate the joystick as joysticks are really good at some things. When Freedom launches the controller will have standard functionality as well as motion-snsing functionality. So for example, if you were playing Tomb Raider, you could play it using standard controller functionality, but if you ran out of bullets you could start punching people, or if you wanted to swim you could swim. We’ve set out to create the ultimate device so that no matter what you think of it can do it. We want to give the developers every option.
“The hardware’s done and ready to go. We’re just looking at when’s best to go from a software and market point of view. We’re penciling in Easter 2008.†The battle lines have been drawn." Full article here
You never told us what you think though..
