14 DAY TRIAL // Shinji Mikami, the man behind the success of the Resident Evil series, has stated that it will take more than ten years for motion control peripherals like Kinect from Microsoft and the PlayStation Move from Sony to become fully mainstream in the gaming world.
The game designer, who is at the moment working on Vanquish, has told the PSM3 magazine that, “I don't think motion controls will be in the gaming mainstream in the next ten years.”
He added that the way motion is capture needs to evolve, adding, “When the technology gets to the point where you can just flick your eyeballs around and the computer can pick it up, you won't need a controller anymore. Obviously it's going to take a while to get there.”
There are other representatives of third party developers that are not convinced about the abilities of Kinect and PlayStation Move, with Alain Corre from Ubisoft saying that the new devices do not have the power to prolong the life of current generation consoles for another five years.
Both Sony and Microsoft have been optimistic about the prospects of motion tracking, saying that the new peripherals will make the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 into new devices that will deliver compelling new experiences.
It's widely rumored that both companies put a lot of money into research and development to come up with their current console designs and that they are not inclined to spend even more money to create a new generation of gaming platforms.
The trend is to make current devices have a longer shelf life by adding more capabilities via firmware and via new peripherals.
The first trend is exemplified by the move to three dimensional gaming that Sony will be introducing in October while Kinect and Move are examples of the second one.
The Move launches this month while Kinect is set to arrive in November.