14 DAY TRIAL // Peter Molyneux recently announced that he was leaving both video game publisher Microsoft and developer Lionhead after the completion of the most recent Fable video game.
However, before that he seems determined to make gamers believe in the superiority of the motion-powered Kinect over traditional controllers.
Speaking to Digital Spy during the Xbox Spring Showcase organized by Microsoft, the veteran game designer said, “I’m going to get totally over the top here, and this is the stuff that gets me in trouble. I’m just bored to death with f**king controllers. I am! Is about as experimental as a brick these days.
“Because you know what it is, whatever game you do, you pick up this controller and you do the same. Your thumb moves here, you can’t move your thumb like this, you can only move it like this.”
Molyneux believes that the limitations of the controller design mean that players are never surprised or challenged by their input experience, which is only linked to thumbs and fingers.
He went on to compare the controller-based gaming experiences that are currently the mainstream of industry with a soap-opera, adding, “There’s got to be more, man. There’s got to be more than that.
“This is like the Hollyoaks of gaming. I mean, it is. Okay, you can sit and watch Hollyoaks from ’til the cows come home and you can feel your life draining away from you. I just want people to approach a gaming experience and think, ‘What if I do this?’”
Fable: The Journey is expected to launch later during the year, exclusively on the Xbox 360 and Molyneux will then join a new company called 22 Cans, although it is not clear what kind of games he will develop there.
Kinect has sold well since its late 2010 launch, but has failed to get game experiences that take full advantage of its capabilities.