Tecmo Koei President Kenji Matsubara says the upcoming motion controls for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 might be fine for casual gamers but he has “concerns” about how they’ll catch on with the hardcore audience.
After months of claiming that their consoles aren’t actually competing with the Wii, Sony and Microsoft finally did an about-face and admitted that Nintendo might be onto something with its unique motion-sensing control scheme. Both companies unveiled their own motion control technologies at E3 this year, Microsoft’s Project Natal and the PlayStation Wand from Sony. The devices have received a very positive early reception overall, but the Tecmo Koei president doesn’t sound quite as confident in them as everyone else.
“We have some concerns over the fact that we specialize in making action games, so we have to explore whether we can achieve real-time response from a controller-free system,” Matsubara said. “We understand that, for casual gamers playing dance games or some sort of fishing game, this controller-free system can be popular. But for hardcore gamers who like actions games, we have to research and develop games that satisfy our core gamers.”
Nonetheless, he said Tecmo Koei is “very excited” about the potential of the new controllers. “I expect that, from the beginning, both these types of controls will be more suited to casual games, and later go into more hardcore oriented experiences,” he said. “We haven’t experimented with both technologies, so I cannot comment on which might be better. But I believe both companies are focusing on the same area – so casual gamers first, then core gamers. We hope that both are successful so that we can expand our business on both platforms.”
Source: CVG
