Maybe he what he meant was "imagine a game machine where you'd want to pick up a bat, or pick up a tennis racket and smash it."

Oh yes, I've played that already too Mr. Gates.

aaaa stop it! stop it! stop it! no more i can't take anymore of this motion shit, i own a wii and i own a 360 when i wanna move, then, i will play the wii, if not i'll play my 360. i can't stand the thought of a really good game coming out for 360 and having to wave my controller around to play it, i enjoy my sedentary FPS life style on the 360 and i got burnt with red steel, i won't fall for that shit again. i mean if it really worked well, maybe, but it would have to be a first party title or else it will be wired and that is sooo last gen. wait! i got it ! hows about we just make a wireless guitar hero controler and call it even huh? :)

How about you make a game where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing's the way it seems

Ahh, but you see the magic here is that the Xbox 360 is readily available in stores, right now. You don't have to know someone who knows someone in order to buy one.

Maybe Bill assumes no one who wants a Wii has seen one on a shelf, and is preying on the pedantic moron who didn't know that video games are from Japan, and the only genres that exist are FPS and MMORPGs.

In which case, then why haven't they seen these?

Haha I remember when Bill Gates said he would never touch motion controls because there's no market there.

Loser.

Legoland California is in Carslbad, but who plays with Legos these days.

Exactly what I've said all along... Microsoft and Sony can always add a 50-60 dollar motion sensing peripheral (Sony's already halfway there) but the Wii can't add a new graphics chip or processor....

I beleive he was talking about something more along the lines of Virtual Reality people.

Well it was only a matter of time before Microsoft went the way of motion control. The Wii has gone from no chance to runaway success, so it makes sense that it's a market the 360 wants to get into. Whether or not 360 owners go for it is whole other matter.

And the award to "Most Intelligent Post" goes to....
*drum roll*
...
zardoz!

I can't stress this enough - human interaction is the most important feature of 21st century consoles

zardoz, I prefer to be lazy and motionless while I play games, so I have to disagree with you there. Motion is fun...when you are in the mood for it. It sounds like you really like it, though.

As for motion controls on the 360, I suspect they'd do something similar to Totem Ball (but done right) where optical recognition allows for motion control without an in-hand peripheral device. Think Minority Report.

@Buck
"I prefer to be lazy and motionless while I play games"

You know you don't really have to jump around the room like in the adverts. You can be just as lazy with the Wii if you like.

@BuckF1tches

You can be lazy and motionless while you play games, but you still have to move something for input, motion control is simply a way of making that movement organic, no matter how slight or lazy that movement may be. We are only at the early stages right now, so I guess this current energetic stage is similar to the way people first played videogames in the 80's - over the top and overly enthusiastic - I reckon it will calm down after a year or two.

When I was at college, a fellow student created a game which recognised your movement without the need for a peripheral, he used an old apple mac, a light sensitive screen, and a back projector. There was a never ending stream of Lemmings falling down the screen which the player stands in front of, the back projector projected your sillouette onto that screen which meant that the light sensitive screen acknowledged your sillouette movement in real time, a simple program running on the mac allowed your real time movement to interact with the lemmings, you could catch them, crush them, hit them etc, it was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played.

Motion sensor interaction is all about human interface design and innovation, it's nothing new and anyone can do it. But doing it right and knowing how best to implement it is a challenge which only companies like Nintendo will excel in, because if the other companies were genuinely interested in human interface design they would have released the wii not Nintendo. I have no problem with Sony or Microsoft, but their attempt at innovation is so unconvincing.

@Dan_Gale, that brings up a really interesting point. I have a friend who has Wii parties all the time (less and less actually, as my Guitar Hero parties have taken over). He encourages everyone to actually stand during bowling like they are throwing a real bowling ball. As scared as his TV must be, it's the best way to get non-gamers to give it a try. It's almost what we all thought of when we first heard about the Wii. I think this is where the Wii succeeds (just like Guitar Hero is more fun when you are standing and letting yourself get into it). I've played the Wii using the minimal amount of motion (and actually find I have better control this way), but when I take out the sarcastic motions, it's really not much different than any other controller, except it doesn't seem to respond as well as a regular controller. It's fun... when I'm in the mood for it. I wouldn't want to play GoW with a motion controller, and I don't think I'd play Wii Sports at all if it wasn't for motion controls.

Crap! I promised myself not to go into this "Wii is not actually the second coming of christ" disputes, but seing you agree with each other in it on crap is DISGUSTING also you are commenting on a 360 post, so this is my turf

Zardos:
"your console has to be designed from the ground up to exploit motion sensor technology. "

FALSE, the Wii "started" as a gamecube. (Actually if you take the Wiimote off it still plays exactly as one.) THE GAMES have to be made with the motion sensor. NOT the console! Also You can play perfectly with the Wiimote on the PC and definetily it was NOT made with that purpose. Also if you expend a few minutes analyzing it, the Wiimote is just a 3d mouse.

"There is a reason why the Wii is graphically inferior, why it looks the way it looks etc, Nintendo arrived at this point after years of R&D"

WHAT? dude they made the console cheap so more casuals could buy it, thats why they used yesteryear technology, Nintendo has admited that publicly in just about every conference they attended in 2006.
--

Yes I know is ridiculous for MS to simply admit they are trying to mimic the Wii, but the thing is they are doing because they CAN (theres no such thing as a patent for an interfase type only for the method) and probably because they have to since people are so hyped in motion sensing being the "next big thing"

Also Nintendo can still focus on casual and family games with the Wii, meanwhile the xbox 360 could cater for the hardcore gamer, Halo 3, Unreal t 3, Oblivion, Star Wars the force unleashed, are games that could benefit a lot with this sort of tech and are just NOT possible in the Wii.

Anyway we are probably doing a big deal out of nothing, Bill Gates was only referring to their crappy Eye Toy like cam tech which was already used in Raving Rabbids with shitty results.

Oh .. and one last thing, the Wii is not the best console for a motion sensor, since motion sensing is best used in a separate thread or a processor core also it should use a hardware memory cache to buffer the information that will go through the heuristics recognition system.

The Wii doesnt have any of that. they use a single processor and the main memory to run all (in case you were wondering why it eats up CPU cycles) the 360 and specially (as painful as it may sound even to me ) the PS3 could do motion sensing much more effectively.

The Wii-mote, so advanced, so innovative no other controller will ever be needed.

Grapefuit Juice:

Until the next, next big thing arrives.

Brain control per example.

@LOC_FChaos

http://gonintendo.com/?p=4183

It wasn't taken from microsoft or nintento, it was taken from third partiers. Unless you want to talk about the powerglove. Then it was. So, 1999 was pretty late for Nintendo to be copying microsoft, or themselves for that matter.

@Azrael

Wrong, the Wii did not start off as a gamecube, the Wii has been in development far longer than the Gamecube, Nintendo decided to base the Wii on Gamecube architecture based on it's low production costs and ease of development.

Your points against the Wii perfectly illustrate the difference between the thought process of designers and engineers, you mention lots of technical reasons why the Wii is this or that, but your are missing the point.

The Wii was conceived by designers, their prime objective being human interface, if you want to stress why the Wii is technically bankrupt then it's just as valid to apply this logic in reverse, let's say that the 360 & PS3 are not actually designed to interact with most people, they are only designed to work with specialist. elitetist gamers who have a history and culture of playing games, therefore they are inferior technical machines than the Wii because they are not machines which excel in human interface. Same could be said for the DS in relation to the PSP.

I'm not saying you have to like the Wii but what continues to frusrtate me is that people always make the mistake of dragging Nintendo into Sony or Microsofts's world and then judging Nintendo by Sony/Microsoft's logic. People fail to grasp that Nintendo are a design company that happens to develop interactive entertaiment, interactive design is not dictated by technology it's actually vice versa, so the whole technical debate about what the Wii lacks is just so redundant because this is clearly not the point of the Wii, it's not as if Nintendo don't know how to create a powerful machine, they have taken a deliberate side step away from the technology race and gone back into developing machines based on interface deisgn. It is pointless to criticise the Wii for it's technical limitations, with a mchine like the Wii, criticising the software is much more appropriate because this is where Nintendo have shifted the emphasis and yet their own games haven't explored or completely justified their new direction of their interface.

Dammit, now these rich bastards are going to start trying to emulate the Wii. Shit shit shit shit shit.

NO NO NO NO THIS IS SUCH A BULLSHIT POST OMG I CANT BELIEVE YOU CONCEALMOO!!!

Gates was not referring to the 360 at all when talking about these things. In fact that interview was the most broad-generalized interview I've listened to in a looong while. Blah I can't believe somebody made an entire blog post about just one little response to a question about future control systems, they were talking like 10 years ahead of the present.

EyeToy

'nuff said

And the next time anything like this kicks off, I'm just going to send zardoz in on my behalf to save the trouble of typing all that stuff myself.