The modern gaming input device has changed little over the years. Sure there have been the few specialized peripherals, light guns, guitars, dance pads and the like. However, the home consoles have been a parade of modified joysticks and buttons crammed into a piece of plastic that fits in your hands. Force feedback did little to modify the way we look at input devices in relation to gaming. Until the Wii, there were no successful attempts to revolutionize the controller. Though wildly successful and copied, are motion controls really the future of gaming?

It is clear that motion controls are here to say. With the amount of consoles Nintendo has sold and the attempts to emulate that success by Sony and Microsoft, it appears that, for better or worse, gamers are going to be dealing with motion controls for some years to come. However, it still remains to be proven if these types of controllers can be used in as innovative a way as many of us first imagined upon hearing the first news of the Wii. Like many, I would love to see some serious light saber or sword fighting done on the Wii. This has yet to be done well, with No More Heroes it was done poorly and Star Wars The Clone Wars fell short as well. When am I going to get to swing the damn remote like a sword?

Apparently that day is rapidly approaching, at least if Nintendo delivers on it’s promises for Wii motion plus. Wii Music like Wii Sports is little more than a whimsical tech demo for this new feature. So, we’ll see if developers can translate this new accuracy into more entertaining games.

As much as motion controls add a fun new element to game play, I have my doubts as to their future as input devices. Aside from the novelty, what motion controls really do is add a layer of realism to a medium steeped in fantasy. Ultimately gestures, no matter how small, are much more difficult to memorize than which button to press. With no uniformity of which movement does what across games, each game’s learning curve is made that much steeper. Ultimately, motion controls greatest shortcoming is that you always have to orient the controller correctly. This often flies in the face of gaming as a leisurely activity.

So if not motion controls, what is the next step? There is no shortage of ideas, from mind controls to elaborate multi-dimensional mouse modifications. But don’t expect anything too revolutionary any time soon. As with most successful ideas in the gaming industry, motion controls will be exploited until they become unprofitable. The immediate future is most likely a hybrid of motion controls and today’s controller. It may be more ergonomic and perhaps integrated with an eye-tracking camera mounted on your television but ultimately, even twenty years in the future, it will be recognizable as what we now think of as a gaming controller.

What do you think the future will bring for gaming controllers?

-Matt Frank

Tags: Game Industry, Nintendo, Predictions, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360

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