Playstation Move & PSP2

To me, if the Wii's controller and the X-Box 360's Kinect had a child together, that child would look something like the Playstation Move.

Playstation Move is Sony's forray into motion controlling for games. It uses a remote that looks very similar to the Wii's remote to capture the player's movements and have them affect the game. From what I've heard, however, the Playstation Move uses cameras to track the movement of the remote, much like the Wii's motion bar.

The thing that gets me the most about Playstation Move and Kinect are the fact that Sony and Microsoft are obviously trying to play catch up in a game that they originally mocked Nintendo for joining. I think it's great that Sony and Microsoft are trying to reach a larger audience with their systems, I just hope they don't focus too much on the new players that they forget the old players who've stuck with them. As awesome as Playstation Move could be, I don't think I want to see Sony start making God of War games that use motion controllers. Some games just need to be played by mashing buttons. Can you imagine trying to play Halo on an X-Box using Kinect? I hope it doesn't come to that.

However, there are several games that I think would be great when played with the Playstation Move. Little Big Planet 2 comes to mind first. For some reason, I can just see that game being even more fun than it already is with motion controls. Another game series that comes to mind is the Gran Turismo games. (Or any racing games, really.) The motion controls worked great on Mario Kart Wii, so why couldn't they work just as well on a Sony racing game? I think it would.

On another Playstation front, Sony recently announced that it felt the PSP would have a 10 year life, much like they're hoping the PS3 will. You know what that means; it will be several more years before we ever see a PSP2 come out. Honestly,I hope Sony doesn't really wait until 2014 to release the PSP2, just to make a point. The PSP is a great system, but we could all do with an upgrade. There are all kinds of rumors and fake pictures cycling around out there of what people think the PSP2 will look like, and I hope that Sony will eventually release pictures of what it will really look like soon. We can only wait so long, Sony.

Here's just a few of the pictures of what people think the PSP2 will look like.

If I had to pick one for what I hope it will look like, it would be this first one, although I don't really see a UMD drive on it, which would turn me off of it. But this first one looks pretty sleek, eh?

This next one looks too much like the child of a PSP and a PS3 controller for me to like it. It's just too big and bulky for my tastes. Although I like the idea that the PSP2 could be a GPS.

This final one looks nice and slim, but it's just too... awkward. I like that there's two thumbsticks, but they're in such a weird place. It looks like it'd be hard to play with them. But that might just be because I'm used to the PS3's controller.

My final thoughts on the matter? I think the Playstation Move could give Sony the bump it needs to get out of 3rd place in sales. It has the potential to make the PS3 even more awesome than it is. As for the PSP2, it's nice and all that it's sticking around for so long so that we don't have to keep buying new systems, but I hope they aren't postponing the release just to make a point.

X-Box 360 "Slim" and Kinect

If you haven't heard already, Microsoft has released a new, slimmer version of the X-Box 360.

The new version has built in Wi-Fi, is Kinect ready, and was supposed to get rid of the RRoD problem that the older systems had. (RRoD: Red Rings of Death. A problem that occured when an X-Box 360 would overheat and crash.) Turns out, though, that the Slim version is already having overheating problems and it's only been around for a short while. Sad to hear, but no real surprise.

I think it's cool that Microsoft has slimmed down their system (the slimmer version does have a rather sleek, sexy quality to it.), and it's definitely about time that they added built in Wi-Fi. (The fact that you had to spend extra money to get Wi-Fi connectivity always seemed like Microsoft money grubbing.) But, you'd think they'd spend a bit more time trying to make the system less likely to crash. It's great and all that they're so good about replacing the systems that crash, but wouldn't it be a better use of their time to make a system that didn't need to be replaced so often? I think so.

In other X-Box news; Kinect has made an even bigger step into the spotlight. Formerly known as "Project Natal", Kinect is supposed to revolutionize the way we play games. Kinect is a type of motion controller that, instead of using a remote and motion sensor like the Wii, uses cameras to capture the player's movements and have the game react accordingly. The demo videos I've seen of it make it look pretty dang awesome. If it performs as well as it does in the videos, it might just succeed at it's goal.

I've heard tell that Kinect is going to need a pretty large room to operate in, which might be bad news for people like me. I live in a typical bachelor pad apartment and my front room isn't as big as it might need to be for Kinect to work. But, who knows?

All in all, I'm excited to see if Kinect can live up to the hype. It definitely has the potential to be very awesome. As far as the new, slimmer 360; I really wish we could get to the point that we can play our X-Box anywhere without worrying about overheating and the RRoD.